


What the Past Brings to the Future

by bloodspatteredprincess



Category: Dracula & Related Fandoms, Dracula - BBC, Dracula - Netflix
Genre: Angst and Fluff and Smut, Angst and Romance, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-05
Updated: 2020-02-12
Packaged: 2021-02-19 02:30:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 27
Words: 29,703
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22137097
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bloodspatteredprincess/pseuds/bloodspatteredprincess
Summary: A closer look into the relationship between Count Dracula and Zoe/Agatha Van Helsing, leading to their ultimate understanding of one another.
Relationships: Count Dracula/Agatha Van Helsing, Count Dracula/Zoe Van Helsing
Comments: 285
Kudos: 418





	1. Chapter 1

He was dripping wet, black hair sticking to his forehead. His relief of having finally made it to England and escaping the harking, disruptive company of Sister Agatha Van Helsing had vanished as quickly as it had come when loud whirling and a blinding light overcame him. Guns were pointed at him from every direction. Beams of lights hit him from all around from what he believed to be the equivalent to a carriage. Where was he? When was he?

Welcome to England, Count Dracula,” a familiar voice called after him. His eyes peered past the blinding haze from the beam of light above, falling upon the owner of such a voice. Tall and thin with mousy hair cut just at her shoulders. Her gaze was determined. Her voice was so familiar, but the accent was off. Her hair blew in the wind that was being created by the blades of the flying machine that was hovering over them, forming chocolate halos above her head. “What kept you? Are you hungry?”

  
He stared at her features, the same features of the nun which he had hypnotized for weeks aboard the Demeter while he fed on her and conversed with her within the dreamlike state he would put her in to keep her under his control before she discovered his game and was framed by him for the murders of the deceased passengers he killed, “Agatha?”

  
“Do you need to feed now?” Her voice stayed stern, yet her conviction was not the same as the nun which he enjoyed playing a game of cat-and-mouse with, sometimes not knowing if he was the cat or the mouse. She seemed to hold more compassion for him than the nun which he was still enthralled with when she informed him that he had been asleep for 123 years.

  
It was not until he shot a woman with her gun and held it to the jaw of the Sister Agatha look-a-like that he got his answer, arm wrapped around his shoulders to bring her body closer to his own, “You’re not her, are you?” He felt her pulse race under his fingertips. Her eyes tried to hide her fear of him and what he was, but she failed when he saw it flicker behind her irises. “It is the same bloodline.”

  
Her false confidence conveyed her relation to the deceased nun as her second great aunt on her father’s side. She shared the Van Helsing name and what he now knew as the Van Helsing looks. His eyes were fixed on her own, what looked like Agatha’s brown eyes translating all of the emotions running through her veins that he felt pulse under his hands. He almost missed the delicious twitch of her bottom lip as he pulled her identification badge off of the lanyard around her neck with a forceful yank, her breath hitching and as she flinched.

  
His viciously debonair grin flashed sets of pearly fangs which reflected against the headlights from the vehicles behind her as he pulled away. The pistol in his grasp fell into the sand with a light thud, drowning out the nearly inaudible rasping sound of his fingernails dragging against her throat. Neither of them knew if she shivered out of fear or some other emotion that couldn’t be placed, but the movement did not go unnoticed by either of them.

  
When his hands fully left her body, a colony of bats swarmed her and her guard of rugged men holding modern weapons. Her scream as she covered her head with her arms pierced the silence of the beach and his keen ears as he disappeared when her body hit the sand beneath her feet. The panic that came with the leathery flapping of bat wings died slowly and completely as she pulled her face out of the sand to stand and disorganize her group of men.

  
“Go home, everyone,” she huffed in defeat, brushing herself free of the granules that covered her clothing and hair. She couldn’t help the frustration that overcame her as she stared down at the young girl with a hole in her head and bloody, congealed sand around her. “Please call an ambulance for Amanda. Her fiancé is number one on her speed dial.”  
“Yes, Dr. Van Helsing,” a faceless man agreed.

  
She drove herself back to the Jonathan Harker Foundation, mind racing. She still had things to do, paperwork to sign and file. The digital clock on her car radio read 12:36 am, yet her body was humming with adrenaline. Her left hand held the steering wheel steady while her right raked down her face, fingertips trailing down her neck where the vampire scraped her delicate flesh with his razor-sharp nails. The path he left on her skin was red and slightly raised from the irritation he caused her throat.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter contains some mild adult content as well as a bit of force that could be trigger for those who have been forced into a sexual situation. This chapter does NOT contain rape.

She ran her own painted blue fingernails across the marks he left on her flesh with a small sigh. At least she didn’t end up like that poor girl he shot, but why didn’t he try to kill her? He killed Agatha Van Helsing who she resembled identically since the Count honestly believed she was Sister Agatha instead of Dr. Zoe Van Helsing, head of the Jonathan Harker Foundation’s medical and supernatural research. What stopped him?

The chill of her apartment hit naked legs when her feet, toes painted to match her fingers, hit the linoleum. The large Oxford t-shirt she slept in fell at her upper thigh and threatened to reveal constantly hidden skin as she reached up into her cabinets for glass to put water in. Her eyes drifted shut as she was lulled by the running faucet only to jerk awake when the icy liquid enveloped her hand. As she jolted awake, her eyes caught a glimpse of another’s in the reflection of her kitchen window.

She tried to turn but was pinned to the edge of the counter by the body of Count Dracula. His dead hands covered hers as he forced their fingers to intertwine. She fought to push him away with all of her strength. Her heart raced and pumped in her ears as she attempted to kick, his deep maniacal chuckle seemed to have forced her to stop fighting like some sort of spell had just overcome her entire being.

“I’ve always wanted to know what those legs of yours looked like, Agatha,” he cooed as his lips trailed over the scratches he left on her throat only hours ago, “or should I call you Zoe.”

She closed her dark eyes with shallow breath and gripped the edge of the sink tighter, squeezing his fingers tighter in turn. Her mind raced in all sorts of directions. She was no nun. She knew what it felt like to be touched and kissed and… “It’s Dr. Helsing, Count Dracula, and I would appreciate it if you would let go of me. Please.”

He only flipped her around, placing her to sit upon the countertop next to her still running sink. She opened her mouth to protest, but found that her voice was lost in his intense gaze on the crook of her neck which followed the line of her collar bone which his fingers softly traced, sending another shiver up her spine. This, however, was no shiver from fear, but rather a shiver of anticipation.

A hiccup of rhapsody left her mouth as he forced her lips to his without any warning. It was his lips against her own that made her feel lightheaded, almost nonexistent. She didn’t feel real, but his hips forcing themselves between her knees felt just as real as it did every time she brought a man into her bed.

She was enchanted, almost forgetting the man between her legs held her at gunpoint and killed a colleague of hers. She didn’t fight as he pulled her shirt over her head and threw it into the running sink, leaving her in only the cotton thong she put on after her shower because her more comfortable panties were in the wash. When his lips parted from hers he grinned at the sight of her cheeks blushed and her head was thrown back in expectant agony. He sucked onto her collar bone, being careful not to puncture the thin skin under his lips that pulsed roughly and loudly in his ears.

Her calves wrapped around his waist, pulling him to press harder against her as she felt capillaries burst under the suction of his cold mouth. A breathy sigh escaped her as she rolled her hips against him, “How anxious you must be, my Zoe, my Agatha.” His fingers trailed up the cotton where her legs met her abdomen causing her to jolt further into his hold.

Suddenly she was falling, head smacking the desk in her office at the Jonathan Harker Foundation. Her pen toppled to the ground as papers fluttered down with it, but all she could think about was the pleasant flutter in her lower abdomen and the slight ache at the curve where her neck met her shoulder. The compact in her purse confirmed the love bite on the left side of her throat right where he had previously scraped her neck with his nails.

She didn’t know what was her reality and what was just an overactive imaginative dream caused by her lack of sex life. It had been almost a year, but this tangible hicky which she knew she did not have when she left the beach to work on some paperwork in her office. She hadn’t gone home yet. She didn’t wake up in the middle of the night for water, yet the bruise he kissed into her skin in her ‘dream’ was real and aching.

A knock on the door brought her back to reality, “Dr. Helsing, the tracking team believes that they have an idea where we may be able to find Count Dracula. They’re currently putting together a map of the locations he has already killed and where he might kill next.”


	3. Chapter 3

“Is everything in place? Is the phone in the box?” Her voice was stern as it always seemed to be when it came to her work as she eyed over the bulldozers and other machinery that was in place to capture Dracula and bring him back to the research facility. Multiple forms of ‘Yes, Doctor’ gave her the answer she needed to dial the number and hope he was intelligent enough to find it and realize what it was. His voice over the line almost caused her to lose her concentration and focus on the mission at hand: secure him without allowing him to escape or burn to a crisp in the sunlight. Extreme measures were to be taken if necessary. “Get in the box.”

“How did you find me?” 

She couldn’t help the smirk that fell on her lips. Was he so naïve to believe that he covered his crimes well enough for her and her team to not sniff him out? “It wasn’t difficult to follow your trail of devastation. Now, the sun is out. Get in the box.”

“You may not have noticed that there is a roof over my head,” he quipped in confidence. Surly she was intelligent enough to realize he was protected. Once the sunset, he would be sure to escape Zoe Van Helsing who, at first glance, seemed intellectually inferior to her deceased counterpart. 

She shared a glance with the operator of the large yellow rig which was positioned at the side of the home which the box that would protect Dracula from the sunlight sat, giving the operator a wave to signal that it was time to pull down the roof. The sun would pour into the home which he believed would keep him protected. He let out sounds of panic as the destruction of the home began, “Get in the box.” There was no response from him the acknowledged her command, so she gave the driver signal to pull down more of the roof. “Did you hear me? Are you in the box?”

His breath was heavy in her ear, causing her mind to once again become unfocused. The images and feeling of his hands between her legs and lips on her throat came crashing back to her consciousness, only breaking when he said in a raspy way, “Meet me downstairs.”

She put the phone back into her pocket when the line went dead. Her partner asked her what he said, “Is he in the box?”

“He wants me to meet him downstairs,” Zoe replied, straightening her back and heading towards the entrance. She ignored the calls of her partner as her sights were set on the open door. Her heart was pounding in her chest. She didn’t know if this was her fight-or-flight instinct or the memory of her ‘dream’ coming back to haunt her as she was about to come face to face with the beast once more. Her subconscious hoped this encounter would be a continuation or lead to the continuation of her ‘dream’ of him, but her conscious and realistic being reminded her incessantly that this was most likely a trap. 

“Hello?” She called. “Count Dracula?” No response fell to her ears. “Okay, I’m coming in.” Her announcement was reinforced by shutting the door, the damaged roof settling as the latching of the door jostled it. “Keep in mind,” she threatened, “I have people outside and if anything happens to me they’re going to tear the roof off and let you burn.”

There was radio silence all around her and she almost wondered if he had already burned to death in the sunlight that ripped through the home. It was a disheveled mess. A mirror was shattered. The refrigerator was on the floor surrounded by broken chains and spattered blood. “Where are you?” She muttered to herself, jumping as the refrigerator shook, the door slowly opening. She held her breath as she approached the red-smeared, white box with a mix of curiosity and fear coursing through her body. Surly Dracula would not have contorted himself to fit into the fridge.

She gasped with disgust as her eyes landed on the bloodied and broken man in the box who looked like a professional contortionist, jumping back as the being begged her to kill him, put him out of its misery. She backed away, content on just finding her charge and getting him safely to the research facility. She was honestly afraid. Through all of her research into Count Dracula and vampires in general, she had never seen such a thing in her life.

The little hairs on the back of her neck stood on end, the love bite tingled and her stomach flipped. How was she disgusted and terrified, but still thinking about the indecency she wanted to commit with the count she was trying to track down? She needed to focus. She was getting distracted and such a state of mind would only betray her in a dangerous situation like this one. 

She gathered herself was a deep breath which only came out as a terrified exhale when she heard him coo in her ear, “Are you scared yet?”

On instinct, her body went to turn to face him and confront him on sneaking up on her. Hadn’t he heard her warning? Her people would let him burn if he hurt her. Her exhale turned into a small scream as his fangs bared and he grabbed her, teeth sinking into her flesh on the right side, mirroring the bruise on the left. The pain of his teeth ripping apart skin, muscle, and tendons were unbearable.

Her vision went black and came back in an instant, revealing a place of desiccation lit in orange and red lights like a demonic sunset. She should have been scared, but she felt as she had the night before, weightless and nonexistent. She almost felt at ease when she saw his face as he made his way to stand only a few centimeters in front of her. His hand felt warm on her cheek as he stroked her skin, thumb traveling to her lips.

“You’re killing me,” she accused with the softest thought she could manage. Her heart nearly skipped a beat as his thumb pressed into her bottom lip to part it from the top. She almost felt the drive to take the digit into her mouth, but she resisted and kept her eyes on his, wide and alert.

His face came closer to her own with a soft look, “It doesn’t have to hurt.” His free hand traced up her side, starting at her hip and gliding up her slim frame. He moved over her arm with that hand, tracing swirling lines up her clothed arm and shoulder to push aside the fabric to lightly graze the love bite he created before. He pressed into it lightly, enjoying the gasp which passed through her lips and over his thumb which parted them.

It was then she had made up her mind to give in. His touch felt, feeling better than any orgasm she had ever been given by any man or her fingers even though this touch was meant to be innocent and relax her through her death. Her eyes softened as she leaned into his touch further. She took a step closer, but he wrenched himself away, convulsing with each heave of bloody vomit. She began to worry, stepping closer to him in the orange glow only to be dragged back to reality.

He slammed her up against the wall, head crashing into a broken mirror. Dracula threw himself onto the carpet as he choked on Zoe’s blood. He snarled at her as she couldn’t help the small smirk that landed on her mouth as she still felt his thumb parting her lips, a smirk he was sure to confuse with contentment for his pain. He collapsed onto the floor, eyes on her before closing in unconsciousness.

“Get that box in here!” She called out the door.

She knelt to him, rolling him onto his back. She caressed his cheek as he had done to her during his control of her senses. She parted his lips with her thumb on his bottom lip that was stained with her blood which seemed to be poison to him.

Her crew picked him up and placed him into the steel box, locking it to be sure he would still be restrained even after he regained consciousness. She made sure they didn’t jostle him too hard, blaming her extreme concern for the undead on the fact that he was a live specimen.

“Zoe!” Amelia, her partner, exclaimed, pressing a wad of gauze her to her bleeding throat. “Are you alright?”

Zoe nodded, watching intently as men carried Dracula’s box out into the sunlight, “I’m fine, I think. Just give me a full workup when we get back to the lab, okay?”

“Yeah, of course,” Amelia whispered, noting Zoe’s behavior.


	4. Chapter 4

Dr. Amelia O’Connell placed her good hand on Zoe’s neck while Zoe held a sheet to her bare chest, flinching as her partner dressed the bite on her neck with clean gauze and antiseptics designed from Dracula’s saliva to hopefully ward off infection and incurable immortality. Zoe just hoped Amelia wouldn’t notice the prominent bruise on the opposite side of her slender neck, but the blemish was so dark against her skin.

“He did a number on you, didn’t he?” O’Connell sighed as she injected the antiseptic into Zoe’s ripped flesh, Amelia’s bandaged hand from her run-in with the count resting over the hickey on Zoe’s throat. 

Zoe only nodded with her eyes focused on the door in front of her which led to a hallway that would lead to the chamber which Count Dracula was being kept under lock-and-key in isolation, being watched by an armed guard at all hours of the day and night. The vampire was surly awake by now and in the triangle-shaped cell he was to be kept in and studied. She wondered to herself if he had asked for her or if he wondered where she was.

Amelia eyed her partner with a small grin as she revealed the love bite on Zoe’s neck, “Well, I’m glad this survived your vampire bite. Your lover might have been offended if his handy work was destroyed.”

“Excuse me?” Zoe reflexively covered the blemish with her hand, the pressure on it sending small waves of what she believed to be pleasure through her body. She blushed like a teenager, hiding the mark from Amelia as she had done after being caught in a similar situation in college by her mother with one of her classmates during Christmas break. “What you’re implying is unprofessional, Amelia.”

Dr. O’Connell scoffed as she secured the final bandage on Zoe’s neck, “You’re the one who is naked on my exam table.” Zoe eyed Amelia with a small bit of amusement in her eyes. If only Amelia knew the dream Zoe had to have to get that hickey. “Besides, it’s not like you and I have never talked about good, old sex before.” Amelia flattened the bandages on Zoe’s skin with a firmer than necessary hand, “Just spill it. I’m sure you’re dying to tell someone.”

Zoe couldn’t hide the smile on her lips any longer. What would it hurt to spill a bit of information? It’s not like Amelia would ever catch onto the fact that this intimate encounter was just a dream that just happened to manifest on her skin. For all Zoe logically understood and knew, the mark was just a burn on her throat from her curling iron the morning before the dive team led by Amelia discovered Dracula’s resting place that she associated with the vampire because both occurrences popped up on the same day, connecting the two events through her wildly erotic dream of Count Dracula.

“Well, well,” Amelia smirked in a way that could have only led to mischievous actions, “I haven’t fooled around with a man like that in years.” Zoe could only roll her eyes as she clasped her bra and pulled her blouse back on. “It sure is a good thing they want you to take a few days off to heal. Three days of uninterrupted orgasms sound heavenly.”

“I’m not taking time off,” Zoe blurted out unceremoniously. “Count Dracula is under this roof and I am not going to allow anyone else to start my study without me.” She scooted off the table only to stumble slightly as she was overcome with dizziness. She grabbed onto Amelia so that she wouldn’t fall to the floor.

“You’ve lost a lot of blood,” Amelia explained as she pulled Zoe back up and into a chair. “I’ll take you home as soon as I check on the Count. You’re not fit to drive.” As Zoe began to protest, Amelia left the room and slammed the heavy, steel door.

Her head was spinning. She hadn’t felt this way all day. Why was she feeling so ill now? She didn’t seem to have the strength she did only three hours ago when she watched the vampire throw himself to the ground and choke on her blood. She could feel him on her, pressing her to the wall as the weight of her head against the shattered mirror caused the glass she shifts with a shrill scrape. She felt his tongue drawing her blood into his mouth with warm strokes on the broken skin. His hands choking her while he attempted to suck the life out of her. Though her nerves relived this assault, her eyes played the hypnotic scene in front of her once more. She relived the soft expression on his face as he stared down at her like she was the most precious object in the world.

“Well, I guess I’ll see you in a few days, hm?” Amelia smiled as she parked outside of Zoe’s apartment complex. “Do I need to walk you up? You don’t look very well.” Zoe pulled herself out of her haze before declining the offer. Her apartment was dark, yet soothing. She hadn’t been home since the morning before the dive team discovered Dracula a ways away from the wreckage of the Demeter.

Shedding her clothes as she made her way to the bathroom, leaving a trail of dress pants and undergarments in her wake, felt like ridding herself of a slimy layer of goo. The hot water from her shower head poured over her and seemed to wash away her consciousness as she inhaled lungful after lungful of steam. Her body rested on the tile floor of shower-tub combination, too weak to stand, with her head between her knees, her back chilled by the ceramic against her back. She would have worried about her mortality if she didn’t know her symptoms were that of extreme blood loss and her body attempting to function with such little iron in her bloodstream. 

The arms around her body almost felt like her own. The kiss on her temple could have been easily mistaken for a jet of water adjusting as the water pressure shifted, but she couldn’t explain away the hand that was creeping around her waist to pull her tighter to the strangely warm tiles against her back. She was too weak to fight the person pulling her naked body closer to his own, member pressed to her back, “This isn’t real. You are not here. You are not real. This is not real.”

His voice was rugged in her ear, tongue tracing the shell of her ear, “Are you sure, Agatha? I’m sure I can make you feel like this is quite real.”

“I did not invite you into my apartment,” her voice was frail, whizzing through the shower stall in time with the steam that surrounded her. “You cannot enter my home without an invitation,” her voice fell in volume as he pulled her head back by her hair to rest against his strong shoulder. Her mousy hair stuck to her skin, strands sticking to her own as she reached for his hands to hold. “You are not here. This is not real.”

“Let me hold you,” his whisper caused her to sigh and make him chuckle.

What was the point of her fighting this? He wasn’t real or with her in her shower as the water soaked their bare bodies, so she gave in, forgetting the danger she could have been in or the hold he seemed to have had over her mind which was stronger than she had expected. So, she relished in the warm water on her skin and the male body behind her, allowing him to wash her skin with the lavender body wash that sat on the lip of the tub and allowing him to wash her hair with the honey-scented shampoo besides the body wash.

Her trance came to a screeching halt as the hot water ran out and the shower began to bombard her with ice-cold water droplets. Her head shot out from its resting place on her knees. The body she thought she had clung to was gone, but that did not stop her from checking around her apartment every time she heard a creak. 

She could have sworn she was losing her mind when she slipped on her oxford shirt and a pair of panties. She hadn’t been in the kitchen in hours. Why was the sink running?


	5. Chapter 5

He was getting tired of guards watching his every move, but he did find it rather amusing that they seemed to think their mortal guns would deter him from attacking anyone. These men were always at the ready, weren’t they? Perfect little soldiers trading off their post every six hours, right down to the second. The only time he was not being stared at was while the two men traded notes from their watch, discussing what would be reported to Dr. Helsing. They had informed him that the doctor was out sick as if he didn’t already know her absence was caused by his attack on her as well as the games he was playing with her.

With Sister Agatha, he couldn’t use sins of the flesh against her as successfully as he could with this Zoe woman who he was still convinced was Agatha, maybe a potential reincarnate. He wasn’t sure. All he was aware of was the way he felt when he was around her, that insatiable need to toy with every fiber of her being. She was his equal in every way, a worthy adversary, and he intended on keeping her around, to play with her the whole time she would be away or ‘out sick’ as he was told. He had to admit Doctor Agatha was much more fun that Sister Agatha and she didn’t fight his advances as easily. She was more selfish, more carnal in her movements.

The tablet, as it was called, he was provided was filled with every book that had been published during his hibernation as he was informed by Dr. O’Connell who would visit him just after sunrise and just before sunset. He found O’Connell quite the bore, spending most of her visits with his nose in an electronic book. He was quite fascinated with The Shining by Stephen King after Dr. O’Connell informed him that it was one of Zoe’s favorite novels.

“It fits her,” he agreed as he nonchalantly slid his finger across the screen to turn the page, “with her obsession with the supernatural.”

“It fits you as well,” Amelia said dryly as she scratched down notes to give to Zoe when she returned, “with your obsession with Dr. Helsing.” He stood in the shadow in the corner of his triangle cell while the doctor sat that the table in the sunlight. His eyes darkened. He wasn’t used to being called out in this way; at least he would have expected it from Agatha or Zoe, not this nobody doctor who proclaimed herself as Dr. Helsing’s right hand. He knew what that girl’s right hand was like. O’Connell was not Agatha’s right hand, “I don’t recall you asking me any question except when Dr. Helsing will return.”

The vampire placed the electronic device onto the back of the toilet in the corner he was standing in. He still wondered why it was even there, but chose to keep his eyes on the doctor in front of him, “I do not mean to offend you, Dr. O’Connell, but I don’t find you nearly as fascinating as your superior.”  
Amelia let out an amused snort as she tossed a framed copy of a photo of Sister Agatha Van Helsing from her convent towards the man in the corner, “Is that because I do not look just like the woman you murdered?” 

He snarled in her direction before laying his eyes on the photograph of Agatha in her habit, but he remembered the sight of her long hair that was hidden in this picture under her headpiece, “I did not murder her. She drowned.”

“After you attempted to strangle her, but you couldn’t follow through,” Dr. O’Connell stared him down, attempting to antagonize him as Zoe had suggested, a tactic she believed would help them discover his weaknesses and why he has them. When Amelia saw the fire that was burning in Dracula’s eyes, she began to push a bit harder, “Her body washed up and was preserved so that an autopsy could be performed by a member of the Van Helsing family, Zoe’s grandfather, who noted every mark you put on her body.” Dracula could only think of the many different ways he wanted to tear O’Connell apart as she listed off the injuries on Agatha’s body that occurred before she died, “She had rope burn on her throat from where you tried to have her hanged. There were multiple bite marks on her neck as well from what we can only assume was when you fed on her. Her lip was busted and has several splinters caused by you throwing her to the ground. She was malnourished from her weeks of being unconscious aboard the Demeter. Surprisingly, she was dehydrated for a drowned woman.”

He slammed the frame onto the porcelain which caused the glass and frame to shatter, “Don’t you think I know this, Dr. O’Connell. I was thereafter all.” If it weren’t for the sun shining through the ceiling he would have ripped her limb from limb and fed on her. He wanted to feel her die in his hands.

“They say drowning is the most excruciating way to die. You can’t stop it,” her voice was dark as she stood from the table to face the vampire who refused to make eye contact with her. “The body forces itself to inhale water as the body is overcome by carbon dioxide. Water floods the lungs and causes the victim to feel as though their heart may explode and that the stomach and lungs are burning.” She was at the edge of her sunlight shield now, staring him down, “She experienced a slow and painful death.” His anger overcame him as he lunged for Dr. O’Connell, writhing in pain as his hands and arms burned in the light. He pulled himself back into the shadows. Amelia only scoffed at him, “I’ll let you keep her picture so you can feel the pain you caused her.” As she left him alone in his cell once more she pointed at the folder on the medal table, “Her autopsy report is in that folder if you decide you want to torture yourself as you tortured her.”

He turned his back to the guard as he sat at the metal table, his eyes stinging with tears. When he met the nun, he never thought he’d become so attached or obsessed. Now, even after so many years, he saw her as she truly was, a woman who could match his intellect and wouldn’t bow to him as most her kind did. Agatha was different. Zoe was different. He remembered the way her brown hair laid over her shoulders and down her back. The way she smiled at him while they played chess in her dream. She tried so hard to figure him out. With Zoe, she had that same smile and would give it to him when he pulled out the chessboard to try and recreate those moments he had with Agatha. It was almost identical.

“Check,” Zoe grinned up at him, crossing her legs on the carpet. “I see my win in two moves.”

He could only chuckle as he reached across the board to tuck her bangs behind her ear, “You’ve made a fatal mistake, Zoe. In trapping my king, you have left yours vulnerable.”

Her face twisted in confusion and dismay. She had obviously inherited Agatha’s competitive streak, but she wouldn’t be as much fun to toy with if she hadn’t, “You tricked me. You cheated.” Her grin was amusing, “You’ve got me in a single move. I’m done for.”


	6. Chapter 6

“What on earth are you doing here?” Amelia O’Connell chastised as Zoe threw her bag down onto her desk which was littered with the reports on Dracula from the past two days. “You aren’t supposed to be back for two more days. Did you get cleared by the medical board?”

Zoe reached to flip through the seemingly endless stack on typed and handwritten documentation of every word and breath Dracula took in the past forty-eight hours. Most of it was useless as she had suspected. He mainly insulted the guards or the doctors who visited him when he wasn’t reading or repeatedly asking the same question over and over again, “Is Dr. Helsing coming back soon? I find you all boring.” His reaction to the Twilight saga by Stephanie Myers was rather amusing to her, “Vampires sparkle in the sunlight? No self-respecting vampire would every drink animal blood instead of a human. The taste is quite inferior. Did Zoe have this downloaded just to insult me? Get her in here so I can give that annoying woman a piece of my mind.” Then came his obsession with The Shining, her favorite novel, “Don’t you think this is one of the best novels by Mr. King? Did you know there’s a sequel to it? I believe it’s called Doctor Sleep. Get Zoe on the phone. I need to know if she’s read that yet and if it is worth my time.”

“I am the medical board and I’m fine, asymptomatic so far and I don’t expect symptoms to develop at all,” Zoe huffed as she began to quickly sort the large stack of mismatched paperwork into piles organized by report type and sub-organized reports submitted about his daytime activity and his night time activity. Her scanning of the documents before her stalled when she read the document titled ‘Reaction to the Autopsy Report of Sister Agatha Van Helsing –Dr. Amelia O’Connell’, “What did you do? Why would you give him that information?” Amelia grabbed Zoe’s shoulder, but she pulled herself out of the woman’s grip, eyes wide with anger, “That information is classified.”

“No, it’s not, Zoe. Any one member of the foundation has access to it.”

Zoe closed her eyes as she placed the papers against her face, attempting to calm herself down before she said something she would regret later. Dr. O’Connell was a good friend, but this was, in Zoe’s eyes, unforgivable, “He was the one who killed her, Amelia! Don’t you think that the monster gets off on such information? And imagine how my grandfather felt while he did her autopsy, cutting open his aunt who was nearly starved to death, beaten, and tortured by the vampire who is now under lock and key in this building.”

“Zoe, I’m sorry. You said to antagonize him and it seemed to have worked,” O’Connell rebutted. “He got emotional as if I were talking about a deceased wife. I think he cared about her,” Zoe’s eyes narrowed, “in some sick way.”  
“Yeah, he cared for her the way a kidnapper cares about their hostages,” she spits back and placed the report separate from the others, making a mental note to review it first. “He was upset like a kidnapper would be if their hostage suddenly escaped before they could finish the job.” Amelia tried to apologize and explain herself to Zoe, but she was unsuccessful as Zoe just ignored her, “Don’t you have a presentation to prepare for?”

“Zoe, come on.”

“Go!”

Zoe felt her blood boiling as she at her desk, leaning back in her chair. She held her breath as her heart pounded in her chest faster than it ever had in her entire life. When she finally let out the large breath she had been holding, she began searching for the file that contained Agatha’s autopsy. If anyone had walked into her office at the moment, they would have thought she had lost her mind and started showing the symptoms of the undead with her manic behavior. She tore her office apart and destroyed the organization of her filing cabinet which contained all source material that was too delicate or important to scan into the foundation’s digital database, Agatha’s autopsy being one of those documents. It wasn’t there. It wasn’t anywhere.

Her body felt like it was on fire from the anger that was boiling through her veins. She stormed through the hallways of the Jonathan Harker Foundation, heels clacking loudly against the concrete floors. Her clothes felt way too tight even though they fit perfectly this morning; her blue pencil skirt felt too clingy and her white blouse felt suffocating, her blazer that matched the skirt now felt as if it were made out of cactus. She threw the blazer onto a hook outside of the isolation chamber in which the Dracula was being held before scanning her ID badge and flipped the switch to begin the cell’s transition into the sunlight so that the count could not attack her again.

“Ah, Zoe, finally I see you again,” Dracula greeted with a wide grin on his face, the same grin he carried in her dreams. “Don’t you look delicious in that skirt?”

She ignored his advances as she unlocked the door to let herself into his cell, hands-on-hips as she stared him down with a scowl, “Where is it?” He cocked his head to the side in amusement to ask what exactly she meant, “Agatha’s autopsy. Where is it?” He held up the manila folder in his hands with a smirk on his lips, “Give it to me, then.”

“In front of your mercenary? Well, Agatha, I never thought you’d be one for exhibitionism, but how can I turn you down with that neckline?” He was trying to appeal to the side of her which he successfully seduced multiple times during his hypnosis of her. Her demeanor did not waver and he knew this girl was not the same one in the Oxford t-shirt who didn’t know the meaning of the word ‘inhibition’. “Fine,” he smirked, “come here. I cannot bring it to you.”

She huffed and made her way towards the edge of the sunshine. Her arms were crossed over her chest. Her expression was still as cold as she stood in front of him, the spell she had been under the past two days no longer has a hold on her, “You do realize that I am not Sister Agatha, don’t you? You insistence rather unravels my original belief that you were very intelligent.” 

She extended her hand into the shadows and he grabbed her wrist tightly, pulling her body to press against his. The guard yelled at him to let go only to be hushed by the count insisting he had no plans on biting the doctor again. Her blood was poison to him. His clawed fingers trailed over the healing bite mark on her neck and the faded love bite on the other side, “You’re healing very well, ice woman. I expect it to be gone in a few days.” She rolled her eyes at him, mind unable to think of an intelligent response with his body so close to hers and the anger boiling over in her mind. She tore the report from his clutches and broke away from his hold, “Will I see you tonight, Mrs. Frost?”

“Bite me,” she quipped over her shoulder.


	7. Chapter 7

Per her ‘bite me’ comment earlier, Dr. Zoe Van Helsing did not show that night right before sunset. Dr. O’Connell took her place once more, boring him with the details of the study that would be done to him and on him and how he would be fed the blood of college students in a controlled environment. He really could not care less. His mind was busy with other endeavors, how he was going to get out of this cage and how he would play with Zoe next. She was his most intriguing project, but he had to get out of here. He missed the hunt.

“Where is Dr. Helsing? Like I’ve told you many times before, Dr. O’Connell, I do not enjoy your company,” he sighed with boredom, flipping through the countless titles on the tablet in his hands.

“You’re not here to enjoy my company,” O’Connell repeated to him for the thousandth time since they had entrapped him. “Dr. Helsing is busy. As the head of this foundation, she has to secure funding and meet with investors as well as cut through bureaucratic red tape. She’s a popular woman.”

His eyes left the electric page to focus on the blonde doctor in front of him. His face was smug as he remembered a babbled conversation he had with one of the college students during the group’s briefing of him, a Jack Seward, who claimed to have been a former student of Dr. Helsing, “I thought I was her life’s work, her family’s legacy. Shouldn’t I be the most pressing matter on her docket?” There was no answer, “Has she gone home yet, then? Why don’t you give her a call for me?” Again, no reply, but that woman finally left him alone. It frustrated him being ignored in that way, but he could finally focus on the real object of his obsession, the woman he knew so many years ago, whose kin he now play with just the same, so he focused his attentions on Zoe as three in the morning struck the clock in his cell. 

He saw her there, in her bed sound asleep. Her face looked relaxed as she rolled onto her left side to face him and wrap the white comforter tighter around her. Her hair was wrapped up in a bun on top of her head. Her face was clean of the cosmetics she had on during her short and hostile visit with him that morning. Her bedside table had a glass of water and a small bottle of over-the-counter pain pills on it. How was she so sweet in this unconscious state, but so hateful when she was awake? He couldn’t help himself when he sat on the side of her bed, hand traveling over her cheek, mussing her hair out of the tie she had it in. He liked how it fell around her face. Her face scrunched up when he ran his index finger down the center of her forehead in a trail over the tip of her nose. He was reminded of when Agatha was under his spell aboard the Demeter in a state of complete calm as he drank her blood little by little. Her face even twisted in the same way as he ran his finger over her nose. Her long hair fell over her breasts. Zoe’s hair only fell to her shoulders, but he wasn’t about to get picky with the length of their hair, long or short, because it didn’t matter. It was her face that captured him. Their mind was fascinating, but they had different priorities.

Zoe’s eyes fluttered open when he parted her lips with his thumb again. He loved the way she looked with her lips parted, especially when her lips were parted in a moan, “Hello, dear.”

“You shouldn’t be here,” her voice was groggy and scratchy as she took his hand from her face and curled up with it.

His free hand petted over her hair, “But I’m not here. You know that, doctor.” Her eyes met his before she rolled onto her other side and made room for him in her bed where he gladly joined her. To him, in his mind, both Zoe and Agatha flashed together. One second he was holding Zoe and the next Agatha was unconscious in cabin 9 while he tore into her throat with his teeth. “You were rude to me today, Zoe. You’re ‘bite me’ comment was uncalled for.”

“You were nosey,” she mumbled.

“You liked watching me choke,” he accused as he brushed the fair out of her face. She looked so fragile in his arms, so broken already.

She shook her head and grumbled something incoherent as she tucked her head up under his chin. The hand he had on her hair went to the top of her head to tuck her closer to him. As her breathing slowed and steadied, he let his mind rationalize why he choked on her blood and why it tasted like poison in his mouth. He had tasted it before a handful of times, each victim falling to a terminal illness, cancer as it was called now. Poor, Agatha, Zoe. He wondered if she had any idea, but through the thousands of times he flipped and memorized her thoughts, it never came up, not once.

“How fitting,” he muttered into her hair before kissing her sleeping lips. “You’re going to die on me again.”


	8. Chapter 8

“Good morning, Count Dracula,” Zoe smiled as she balanced the tray in her hand on hip to close the door to the isolation chamber behind her. When he turned his head to look at her, he noticed that she had the smallest smile on her face, similar to the one she when he watched her sleep the night before. Her expression seemed almost relaxed, almost being the keyword. She never seemed to look relaxed while she was awake, only when she was asleep and under his hypnosis. “How are you settling in?” she inquired without meeting his eyes, flipping her ponytail over her shoulder as she made her way to the control box which he recognized as the device that confined him in a single corner on his triangle cell.

He was enraptured with the sight of her neck that was exposed. The thin white scar line he created on her skin several days ago peeked over the edge of her high collar. He liked having to wonder what that neck of hers looked like under her shirt collar, but her V-neck blouse and hateful attitude from the morning before was still on his mind. Oh how he loved the way she looked, but he wasn’t about to tell her that. It would show her more of his hand than he wished.

Keeping with the tone of the game he wanted to play, standing from his table to watch her move across the room, “Uh, well, I have a chemical toilet and this.” He flicked his wrist in the direction of his tablet. She had to know he wasn’t amused by this modern writing.

“You have every book written during your coma,” Zoe’s dark eyes were devious and the grin on her face widened as she slid him as sideways glace, “and somewhere to sit.”

He let out a small breath of amusement at her clever quip, choosing to hide it from her. He didn’t want to give her the satisfaction of having made him chuckle, “Well, I need more than books, don’t I, Zoe?”

Her cheeky grin fell and her eyes narrowed. He didn’t have to be rude. She roughly flicked her wrist to turn the key that would rotate his cell and allow the sun to bleed in through the ceiling, “Take off your jacket and roll up your left sleeve.” He looked her up and down through the glass walls, having the nerve to ask her why he should listen to her. She shifted her head to one side, eyes challenging him, “Because I told you to and I can break you with a sunbeam.” They locked eyes in a battle of what he assumed was a battle of wills, but she had the upper hand, being able to control the sun and all, so he did as she said without taking his eyes off of her as she unlocked the door and pulled it open, “I’m coming in. Make any attempt to attack me and my colleague will fully open the roof and burn you to a crisp. Do you understand?” 

“Choke to death or die a fiery death? Neither sound very pleasant,” his toothy grin was meant to disarm her and soften her demeanor, but it failed. Her eyes only narrowed in his direction a bit more, her eyebrows knitting together. He let out a huff which caught her attention, “So you’re a doctor this time, hm? I think I preferred the disappointed nun.”

She inhaled rather softly through her nose, causing her nostrils to flare ever so slightly as she conformed her face into a look he couldn’t distinguish as either pride or a general dislike for him, “I’m a scientist.”

His response was created specifically to rouse her into a state of mild frenzy. He liked to tease her and elicit her reactions, so the scowl that she shot his way when he said, “Rather amounts to the same thing, don’t you think,” he was very very pleased with her heated response.

“I am not Sister Agatha,” her words were pronounced and enunciated in way that was meant to get her point across without allowing herself to slip into anger like he wanted her to. She could tell it was what he wanted and she would be damned if she gave him what he wanted, “I am Dr. Helsing and I am the woman in charge of this foundation.”

Though she was determined to keep him from playing cat-and-mouth, it was inevitable. He was better at this than she was. He had over five centuries to perfect his craft and he knew that. He cracked a large smile and laughed at her, “In charge of it? Right.”

Her head rocked back as she let out a loud scoff, “Oh, that’s right.” Her arms crossed in front of her, trying to decide if he was a chauvinist or just ignorant, “I suppose women’s rights were just something you slept through.” 

“Women’s what?” He almost looked disgusted, so she decided on chauvinist. “Did you say rights?”

“You’ll get the hang of it,” he decided she was proud of her self. 

Her arms stayed crossed over her chest as they challenged each other only five feet apart. She was getting better at these mind games. Was he the cat or was he the mouse? Was she he predator or was she the prey? Neither of them knew for sure as each attempted to best the other with each response. They weren’t listening to each other. They were waiting for their turns to talk.

“No, no, no,” he insisted in a voice that she knew was hiding something she was not aware of yet. “What is right? Nobody has rights, man, woman, or beast/” his emphasis on the word ‘rights’ seemed to make her uneasy in a way that he found completely precious. Her cheeks reddened in irritation. “It’s a lunatic fantasy.”

She pursed her lips, “I like to call it civilization.” She seemed bored of this back and forth, so he dropped it when she refocused her attention on the tray she had carried in with her, “Give me your left arm please.” She extended her hand into the shadows to take his hands, “You’re going to give blood.”

He very much preferred her face covered in a smile as it was when she told him her reason for being there, cheeky woman, “Well, that will be a rather drastic change in pace.”

It astonished her how they could be at each other’s throats in one second and smiling at each other the next. The way his eyes softened as she took his bare arm in her warm fingers made her stomach do flips. She wasn’t sure she understood what was going on or how he was so different in her mind. Maybe that was it; he was just in her mind and not with her as she believed the night before when he wrapped her up in his arms. It was like he was staring into her soul as he watched her cleanse a small patch of his skin with an antiseptic wipe. She would occasionally meet his eyes during the process, feeling the pull he had on her as she suddenly wanted to press her lips to his. She just didn’t know the feeling was mutual. How could it not be mutual? He was the one who made sure to be with her through the night thanks to the connection he now had with her through the small bit of her blood he did ingest and didn’t choke on.

“So, what exactly is the Jonathan Harker foundation?” He wondered as he watched her face slightly twist as she fiddled with the needle.

Her huff probed his ears as it had during one of her dreams he invaded. She was losing their game of chess which he was purposefully making her lose, “I can’t seem to penetrate the skin.”

He took the instruments from her and placed the vial between her slim fingers, noting how her blue nail polish was starting to chip. He looked at her with fondness in his eyes as her face twisted into a sea-sick look of disgust as he sliced his flesh with his clawed thumbnail. She looked like she might vomit and that caused his heart to swell with the same pride she felt moments before when she verified that she was not just a doctor, but a scientist as well.

His free hand grasped her wrist and steadied her hand under the stream of blood flowing from his slit wrist. Zoe was bewitched and disgusted all at once as she tried to comb through the logistics of this encounter, wondering why he felt no pain and why she was so bewildered by his presence when he looked at her in this way.

She let go of his hand to screw the cap on the vial of his blood, eyes meeting his for a brief moment when he wondered, “Jonathan Harker was a good man. What does this foundation have to do with him?”

“Do you remember his fiancé, Mina Murray?” Thanks to the look on his face, she knew his comment about her was false. “You let her live and she set up this foundation with her inheritance and the help of Sister Agatha’s extended family.

She should have known that the peace between them wouldn’t last, “So you run the family farm?” His smile was sickly sweet. “I’ve always been a fan of inherited power. Democracy is the tyranny of the uninformed.” His expression darkened as his eyes bore into her in a way they never had before as if he were about to slaughter her, but she knew better than to believe it. “Only in the blood do we find the truth.”

“In the past, our research has mainly been in medical advancements, but its original purpose was in you,” Zoe sighed, refusing to acknowledge what he had just said to her regardless of how true he believed himself to be. “You were to be trapped and studied, understood and humanely fed. You’re a unique specimen.” She was attempting to lighten the mood again. She liked him much more when he was toying with her in a way that was light and flirtatious, not dark and possessive.

“No,” Dracula snipped at her, eyes raking over her body that had suddenly gone ridged, “I’m a 500-year-old warlord and I know mercenaries when I see them.” He grasped her chin to make her meet his eyes, “Who is funding this place? Groups who can afford mercenaries are rarely interested in medical research.” 

She wrenched her face from his hold and took a step deeper into the sunlight that had been shining through the ceiling and warming her skin that was now covered in goosebumps. She licked her bottom lip before drawing it between her teeth, trying to calm herself by stimulating the nerves her triggered when he kissed her during her dreams. At least those times weren’t hostile like the situation she was currently in. She just kept her mouth shut and head down.

“You’re withholding information,” he spat at her. “I’ve given you everything, cooperation and blood. Blood is lives. Blood has all of the information you need if you know how to read it.” He stood as close to her as he possibly could without scorching himself, “Do you know how to read it, Zoe?”

She scoffed at him, a narcissistic tone leaving her mouth to slap him in the face, “You couldn’t read mine. You choked on it.”

“But I remember the flavor though,” he clicked his tongue in the way a child does when trying new food. He pointed to his mouth as he continued to try to remember the taste, “What was that?” Instead of continuing to insult her, he peppered her in compliments about her intellect. “You must be driven by something. Agatha was driven by her need to protect everyone, but you are more selfish, more corrupt.” Through all of his compliments and comparison to her second great aunt who most in this foundation viewed as a saint, she remained insulted by his comments. She wasn’t sure how to feel or where he was going with this. “Ah, Zoe Helsing, you have a shadow on your heart. I’ve sampled this bitter bouquet before.” His eyes met hers once more, softer than they had been throughout his entire rant, a rant that she was honestly getting tired of hearing. She wasn’t a nun. She wasn’t perfect. Yes, she was selfish, but so was he. Let he without sin cast the first stone. His words meant nothing, “I believe it’s called cancer.”

Her mind fell blank and it took all of her willpower to keep her jaw from dropping onto the floor. She couldn’t be sick. She just couldn’t, but the thought of being ill only clouded her mind. She was unable to fully comprehend what was going on when the lawyer Dracula had contacted through skype showed up to have him released at sunset. Her mind was not fully aware, so she packed her things and handed her keys and ID badge over to Amelia O’Connell without a second thought, the vial of Dracula’s blood stashed in her purse. She didn’t hear Amelia call after her as she hopped into her car and drove away without looking back, sunglasses perched on her nose. The only things her mind had fully accepted were that he was going to be free, she could have cancer, and that he was sending her an email as soon as he got out of the clutches of the foundation.

His smile was intoxicating to her as she stood on the other side of the glass of his cell, watching him with his feet on the table, typing away at the tablet in his hand, “I’m sending you an email.”


	9. Chapter 9

If anyone had asked her what she was doing on the beach at sunset all alone, reading an email on her cell phone, she wouldn’t have been able to answer. She could have explained that the sunset was magenta and the air was salty. She would have said that she couldn’t feel a single emotion. The wind had been blowing through her hair and making her coat flapping around her, but all she didn’t feel a single thing. 

She had left the doctor’s office only twenty minutes before she found herself standing on a small cliff as she read the email that made her phone ding in her pocket. Blood is life. Testimony is in the blood. Her blood was dead. Her testimony now contained a terminal prognosis. They said she’d be lucky if she got six months, but they honestly believed only five of them would be livable. So, she had five months to track down the vampire and take him down. She would die in six months and he would live for another six centuries.

Blood is lives. Testimony is in the blood. Do you know how to read it, Zoe?

She had been gripping the vial in her hand. His voice was replaying in her mind. The way he touched her in her dreams made her stomach twist in pleasure and disgust. The thought of the way his lips pressed to hers made her go weak in the knees. She wanted to cry. She wanted to vomit, to expel the taste of him from her mouth. Having the vial of his blood in her hands made her feel close to him and brought her comfort because, for some reason, she felt close to him all the time. The vial reminded her of him keeping her hand in place to collect the blood in the vial that morning. The way his hands felt as the held hers had relaxed her in a way she should not have let herself relax while she was at the side of a murderous vampire. 

They were connected, her and Dracula. He had unlimited access to her through her mind and emotions. She felt his every move and heard his voice in her head. She honestly thought she could speak to him that way, but she never would have admitted that out loud. She would have sounded like a crazy person, so she never acted or attempted to try it out. She would have believed that she was crazy, so she clung to the plastic vial of the vampire’s blood with a white-knuckled grip.

Do you know how to read it, Zoe?

Her sniffles were all that she could hear over his voice chanting, wondering if she was smart enough to be able to crack the code. Blood is lives. The hand that held her cell phone rubbed the tears from her cheeks as she stared down that vial of blood that fit perfectly in the palm of her hand. Dracula was printed on the label in bold, black letters. With the blood in her hands, it felt like his hands in her hands. Do you know how to read it, Zoe?

He was able to control and get into the minds of his victims by drinking their blood. He learned everything he needed to know about them by drinking their blood. That was how he knew about her cancer before she had any idea of her illness. All she knew was that her Tylenol dosage was getting a little higher than it should have been, but one drop of her blood told him she was terminal. She was dying.

Do you know how to read it, Zoe?

She unscrewed the green top of the tube and brought it up to her nose. She didn’t know why she smelled it. It had the simple metallic smell all blood had. When she downed the vial, she had to suppress her gag reflex. For a few moments afterward, she didn’t know why she did what she did. Holding the tube no longer had the effect of her feeling his hand in hers. She no longer felt him and regretted her decision, tears falling faster down her reddened cheeks. 

Agatha Van Helsing, you will be part of me. You will travel to the new world in my veins.

Nausea overtook her, but she held it down when she saw his face in her mind’s eye. He smiled at her, but her mind was still too hazy to determine if the smile was loving or menacing. She didn’t care. She smiled back at him, her eyes foggy as she tried to keep her vision from going black. 

His hand brushed over her cheek and into her hair before allowing his thumb to part her bottom lip from the top one, “Good girl. I knew you could do it. I knew you’d figure it out.” His lips pressed to her forehead before she lost consciousness and fell into the grass with a soft thud.


	10. Chapter 10

“Zoe,” his voice was soft in her ear as he reprimanded her, “I never thought of you to be the reckless type. You lying unconscious on the beach at night is extremely dangerous.”

Her eyes met his in a glare as she stood with her arms crossed over her chest to try and keep herself warm. She felt chilled to the bone, “What do you care?”

Dracula was standing behind her as she looked out over the crashing waves of the ocean, her limp body lying behind where they stood. He placed his hand on her shoulders while he kissed her neck, her hair stinging his face at it whipped against his skin in the wind. The sigh she let out as his lips traveled over her skin was sad and her sobs were breathy. 

He turned her around to meet his eyes that were sorrowful as they studied her red cheeks and swollen eyes, “You’re dying.” He ran his fingers through her hair that fell to her mid-back. His fingers caught in the knots of her hair that were tied by the wind. “I care because I can’t lose you again, Agatha. I just can’t.”

The way her eyebrows knitted together in anger made him take a step back from her. Her lips parted as she let out a heavy breath of disbelief as her eyes darted back and forth between his as she wondered if he was serious, “How many times do I have to tell you that I am not Sister Agatha? Do I look like her? Sure, but that does not mean I am her.” His smile was sad as he stepped to the side to show her that her own body was limp on the ground. Her breath hitched in her throat as she saw herself there, plastic vial in her fingers. Her tears flowed faster, “Am I already dead? Oh, God.”

“No. No!” He whispered in a way that was meant to soothe her, pressing his lips to her temple. “You’re not dead. You’re just becoming familiar with the code you’ve been on the hunt for your whole like.” When she questioned what he meant, he ignored her and took her face in his hands instead, “Do you have a mirror?”

She crouched down next to her unconscious form, not noticing how her hair swung in front of her face and brushed the grass when she reached into her purse to pull out her compact. The mirror in her hand revealed that she looked a bit thinner than she usually did. Her face looked like it had never been touched by an ounce of makeup in her life even though it was clear that she had been wearing it that day as her still body lying in the grass had on a full face. Her hair fell down her shoulders and over her breasts. She clicked the compact closed with one hand as she turned to meet her smiling face.

“Now you see yourself as I see you all the time, Agatha, my dear,” he grinned as his hands cupped her cheeks. When her eyes narrowed, he corrected himself, kissing her lips in a way that made her feel as if she was never going to die and that she would never know pain again. “You are Agatha, believe it or not.

“Is this why you’re always in my head?” She kept pressing her lips to his over and over and over again. His hands gripped her waist in a way that made her ribs feel like they were about to crack, but she didn’t care.

Her arms were thrown around his neck while his hands rested on her hips. The way he touched her felt like nothing she had ever felt before. Each touch felt like the first time she had ever been touch, so, when he lowered her to the ground next to her own unconscious body, she couldn’t breathe anymore. Her head rested in the cool grass as his lips assaulted her neck and his hands slipped under her blouse and bra, softly grazing over her left nipple. She felt like she was being choked, but she was enjoying his hands and lips on her. 

Her senses were overwhelmed as she pushed herself into a sitting position, “Stop. This isn’t real. This isn’t happening.” Her words were meant to convince her to stop kissing him repeatedly, pressing her lips to his for a moment, then pulling him back to her. Her lips were bruising, but she just couldn’t stop herself. Her heart was pounding in her chest as she panted against his mouth, “You’re not here.”

This was the first time he resisted her kiss, brushing her hair out of her face to whisper, “How do you know? I don’t need to be invited to the beach. I’ve not locked in your cell anymore, Zoe. I could be here.”

Her eyes closed as she pushed him away from her completely and let her tears fall again. This wasn’t like her. She wasn’t a woman who showed her emotions even when she was happy. She whimpered as she only felt pain when his hands left her skin, so she grabbed him right back and made him hold her while the laid in the grass together until her vision went black.


	11. Chapter 11

Fear was not something she had felt in that moment as he stared down at her with a wickedly hungry smile on his face, mouth stained in blood, but she wasn’t sure if it belonged to the women who had suddenly stopped screaming on the floor above the cellar he had her trapped in or if the blood was from the wolf he had possessed and tore his way out of. It didn’t matter where the blood came from. It still had that metallic tang smell to it, overtaking the dusty smell of books and wooden floorboards that were most likely older than the immortal.

Her habit was disheveled, revealing her clavicle, neck and shoulder. Her fingers were not manicured as they pulled the fabric further off of her shoulder, testing him and his will power. She didn’t know if she was going to survive this, but she wasn’t scared. She wasn’t afraid to die, but, unlike her now deceased and slaughtered sisters, accepting death wasn’t for the hope of going to heaven through her devotion to God. Though she committed her life to Him, she wasn’t sure she was even a believer anymore. She was only so accepting of what was her inevitable death at the hands of this monster because she had succeeded in saving that young girl, Mina Murray. At least she was able to save someone.

“Agatha Van Helsing, you will be part of me,” he growled, eyes dark in a way that was meant to seduce her. It was not working, but her eyes matched his seduction. Playing along with his devil’s game was more than necessary, “You will travel to the new world in my veins. I’m going to make you last.

Her slender fingers yanked the shoulder of her tunic down with one hand and pushed her wimple to the side. Her heart pounded in her ears and his as she swallowed her saliva that was thick in her mouth. She was taught from a young age that her body was to remain covered and she was willingly exposing it to a man, but her mind which was conditioned to ignore all sins of the flesh justified this as a way to protect the public.

Though her heart pounded with veracity in her covered ears, her expression remained unmoved, eyes challenging his while matching the sex in his, “Come, boy. Suckle.”

He bared his teeth and her eyes widened as her expression shifted to that of fear as the weight of what was about to happen hit her like a ton of bricks falling upon her from the ceiling of the convent, crushing her small frame under its weight. His lips latched to her slender and unblemished neck, tearing into her smooth flesh with ease, tongue lapping at her broken skin.

Her eyes were wide and her mouth was open, head swaying forward and backward with each suck on her throat, but she didn’t feel pain anymore as her body was overcome with a dizzy feeling, numbing his bite and making it feel what she imagined carnal pleasure to feel like, but her expression shifted once more, now having portrayed defiance, fear, pleasure, and confusion all within a single minute. 

A woman stood behind the man that was latched to her throat, being the cause of this new-found confusion. Her face was a mixture of disgust and confusion as her eyes met the nun. They had the same eyes, the same expression, and the same face, so the nun and the woman in strange clothes were unsure, unsure of what was happening to them and unsure as to why the only difference between their appearances were clothes and hair length.

The woman in pants watched on as her study specimen defiled the neck of the nun, her aunt, with a knot in her stomach, once again feeling extreme nausea overcome her, her heart pounding. She almost felt as if there were two heart in her chest, hers and the nun’s, beating in unison. She felt the nun’s fear as she watched on, but she also felt the familiar nonexistence and weightlessness that came with his presence in her dreams and with his bite on her neck several days ago. Her hand running blue fingernails over the jagged white line above her clavicle, in the same spot he was biting to feed on the nun.

Zoe’s body shot up into a sitting position with a startled gasp, lungs aching with the sudden and complete intake of the cold and salty ocean breeze. Her heart was thumping wildly in her ice-cold ears. Her breath was heavy and turned to steam that floated softly around her. Her eyes scanned the darkness around her, but she didn’t know if she was looking for him or just trying to confirm that she was still on the cliff above the sandy beach, scanning over her own body with eyes and hands to be sure that she was still as she was when she lost consciousness. Her bag was lying next to her, everything still inside besides the compact that was by her feet.

She placed her head in her hands as she let the hot streams of the water fall down her face without interrupting their path. She had to keep herself from screaming, her body processing her own emotions as well as the emotions of Agatha Van Helsing as she had been in Zoe’s nightmare. Instead of screams, she let out high pitched hiccups as she whimpered into her now drenched hands.

Her breathing steadied after a while, allowing her to regain control over her emotions and to clear her headspace from the incomprehensible dream she just experienced. She gathered her things and walked to her car, the key between her fingers as she attempted to steady herself on the inconsistent terrain that shifted between grassy and sandy every few steps. Her eyes were swollen from the strain she put on her eyes as she screwed them shut during her breakdown.

She let herself relax to the music that came through her stereo system in her car. She didn’t know the song. It must have been new, but that didn’t matter. Nothing mattered to her anymore, she decided, but she still felt this ache in her entire body that she recognized as the feeling that came over her when he ‘visited’ her on the beach before she had her nightmare, so she wanted to have him there because she knew he couldn’t hurt her anymore because she was poison to him. She needed him.


	12. Chapter 12

She awoke the next night with a splitting headache as her mind felt crowded and as if it were being occupied by too many people. She heard his voice in her mind. She heard her own. The third voice in her head was different however, similar to her own, but it was off by an accent. His voice and that third one had this back and forth that she couldn’t understand, shouting in her mind over what she could only assume was her wellbeing. She didn’t know. She didn’t want to know. She just wanted the noise in her head to stop. Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!

Silence overtook the chaos and all she could hear was the whirling of the dishwasher she had started before she tried to go to sleep an hour or so ago. So, when her phone buzzed with a missed call against her wooden nightstand, it was no surprise that it startled her. She had thirty-one missed calls, twelve from the Johnathan Harker Foundation, most likely Amelia, three from Amelia’s phone, and sixteen from her former student, Jack Seward, who she had helped get a job at the foundation as a donor to feed Dracula when he was under the foundation’s constraints. He hadn’t left her any messages like Amelia or others at the foundation had which wasn’t like Jack who would call her on a whim every couple of days and leave a message when she didn’t answer asking if she was alright and if she could take the time to call her back.

The number of times he had called her made her worry. He was like a child to her, so she called back. The dial tone droned on in her ear and when it seemed Jack had answered there was no greeting, “Jack, are you there?” Still nothing. “You called me a lot of times. Are you okay? Do I need to come to pick you up?” His voice never came over the line, so she pulled the phone away from her face.

As the cold screen left her cheek, she could have sworn she had heard the voice of Dracula on the end of the line asking how she was feeling, but she hit the red, end-call button on the screen to end the call. She thought she was losing her mind. Why was she seeing him in her dreams and hallucinating him when he wasn’t and couldn’t be somewhere like in her apartment where she hadn’t invited him in. He couldn’t enter a building without an invitation. Maybe drinking the blood of a vampire had psychosis-inducing effects such as jumpstarting schizophrenia, but that did not explain her first dream of him after confronting him on the beach the night after Amelia and the rest of the dive team reawaken him.

The classic iPhone ringtone made her drag her eyes back down to the screen in her hands. Unknown was calling. 

She answered, “Zoe, why did you quit your job at the foundation?” Jack Seward’s voice was frantic in her ear. Now her mind had four people in it. “Dr. O’Connell said you just left after Dracula’s lawyer showed up and that you gave her your key card and keys to your filing cabinet. Are you okay?”

“Why are you calling me from a different phone? You called me sixteen times from your own,” she didn’t want to answer his questions. She had always hated the idea of quitting anything and it wasn’t something she had ever done before in her life. “I called you back and you just let the line go silent.”

His voice had not lost its frantic tone, “Someone stole my phone while it was in lockdown at the foundation. I had to buy a new one.”

“Well, whoever it was called me sixteen times,” she sighed and began attempting to calm him. “I’m sick Jack. I have cancer, but you don’t need to worry.”

“You quit because you have cancer?”

“Yeah,” she whispered, not sure why she was whispering exactly, but she was. “Besides, Dracula has rights according to his lawyer and the Harker Foundation cannot afford a lawsuit right now.” She took a deep breath before continuing. Her voice was threatening to crack from the weight of her own emotions as she battled the new sting of her diagnosis as well as Dracula escaping only to be able to threaten the populous of England. “It’s over.”

Jack’s voice sounded disappointed in his mentor, “So, that’s it? You’re giving up just like that?”

“Yes, I am because I’m dying and I just don’t have the energy to play that vampire’s games anymore,” she didn’t sound like herself and that unfamiliar female voice in her head that she briefly believed was her mother chastised her in a way that was harsher than the punishments from her lackluster mother who had no life ambitions. This voice was full of ambition as it shamed her for giving up. 

She noticed Jack sniffle in her ear as she balanced her phone between her head and her shoulder as she threw her feet over the edge of the bed to patter into the kitchen and put on a pot of tea. She could use something to calm her down, “You’re dying? How long do you have?”

“Maybe six months. I don’t know for sure,” she was trying to soothe him more than herself. “I want to enjoy the time I have left. I want to be myself. I need to enjoy my life.”

“What about the foundation? Who will run it?” 

“Jack,” she sighed as her thumb and forefinger pinched the bridge of her nose, “it’s after one in the morning. You need to go to sleep.”

“But…”

She shushed him softly, “Go to sleep, Jack. For God’s sake and mine, please wear a cross around your neck.”


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter contains adult content and mild suggestions of suicide. Please avoid if either situation may trigger you.

The tea kettle began to screech only seconds after Zoe ended her phone conversation with Jack who only seemed more worried about her and what was going on in his mentor’s mind than he was before, but she couldn’t stress herself with that right now. The kettle was begging for her attention, so she poured herself a steaming cup of lavender tea and drank it black, ignoring the way her nerve endings screamed for her to stop as the inside of her mouth burned. 

Her skin felt heated, so she made her way to sit on the balcony that connected to her apartment through a sliding glass door. She sat on one of the two lawn chairs she had bought for the space years ago when she moved in. The air around her was cold, but she still felt feverish as she sipped silently on her tea. She didn’t know why she had bought two chairs because she never had company over and any men that she invited over were gone by morning, even serious boyfriends she had in the past. She hated sharing a bed. It made her feel like she was being suffocated

If anyone were to look up at her balcony and see her, they would have thought she was a bit off as it was two degrees Celsius outside as she was only wearing a too-large t-shirt, a very revealing pair of panties, and fuzzy socks that covered her feet, ankles, and the lower quarter of her shins while she sipped on a boiling cup of tea that was too hot for any living creature to consume without injury. She just stared into the cup in her hands even as his voice overtook her senses once again, blowing lightly over the liquid.

“What do you want?” She sighed as she took another sip of the tea, not even flinching as more nerves in her mouth died a fiery death. Her eyes glanced at him before returning to the lavender elixir in her mug. All of her teacups were dirty.

He placed a cold hand on her thigh, sharp nails lightly digging into her exposed flesh, “You’re going to get hypothermic.”

“Good,” she spat when she yanked her thigh from his grip to cross her legs. “What do you want?”

Before he finally answered her question, he stood from his place on the chair next to hers to make his way to stand behind where she sat, hands slipping under the neckline of her shirt to dig his thumbs into the tense knots that rested next to her shoulder blades, “You.”

Her groan was involuntary as the way his fingers felt as they worked the tension out of her muscles felt like the closest she’d ever come to experiencing God’s heaven. She wasn’t in the mood to fight him. Her tea had done its job of relaxing her enough to lull her back into her realm of unconsciousness where she wasn’t thinking about dying at any given moment, so she enjoyed his touch and gave him the satisfaction of hearing her moan as his lips brushed against her pulse point on the right side of her throat that was covered in goosebumps caused by the chill of the air around her and the way his hands and mouth seemed to worship her skin in a way that she’d never experienced before with other men. She craned her neck to meet his lips, setting off a chain reaction of events that happened too fast for her to comprehend. 

When their lips met, he pulled her off of the lawn chair and against his chest, her tiptoes and his hands supporting her weight as she leaned into him. Her fingers scraped through the coarse hair under his buttoned shirt. His hands cupped her backside, digging his nails into her cheeks that felt firm in his grasp. She groaned into his mouth as his left hand shifted from its place on her rear to wrap her right leg around his waist and press her firmly against the wrought iron railing of the balcony they were on, five stories up. When he balanced her on the three-centimeter wide edge of the railing, he only clung to her tighter while she wished her would just let go and let her fall to her death as her body splatted against the concrete, but he didn’t.

He had both of her legs wrapped around his waist now as he ground his groin against hers. She gladly reciprocated, pressing harder against his concealed length and arching her back when he pulled her shirt over her head and placed his mouth against one of her breasts. She could feel the sharpness of his fangs against her sensitive flesh, but she wasn’t afraid that he’d pierce her skin. He’d die if he drank her infected blood, but she wanted to die at his hand. At least she wouldn’t suffer as much as cancer would make her suffer, but it wouldn’t be as quick as him just dropping her right now.

“Let me take you to bed, Zoe,” he grunted against the shell of her ear as he drove his trouser-clad member harder against her center. Her response was a breathy sigh as she continued to focus on what he was pressing her middle against, her eyes locked on the stars above her head. “You have to invite me in if you want me to have you.” She silenced him with her mouth over his again. She just wanted him to shut up and touch her and grind against her, particularly hard thrust of her hips against his almost caused his hands to lose their grip on her, “If you don’t let me take you to bed, I’m afraid I’ll get too caught up and drop you.”

“Do it,” she challenged, the lust that clouded her mind gone in an instant. “Let me fall. I want to.”

His brown eyes locked with hers as he picked her back up and placed her feet on the cold concrete, the chill seeping through the wool on her feet. His hands left her body in a rough movement, pushing her skin off of his with a shove, “Go to bed. I’m done with you now.”

“Done with me?” She half shouted as she took a step closer to him, challenging him even though she stood a head shorter than him.

His hand cupped around her throat and pressed her against the wall, “You’re selfish. How could you want to waste your life like that?”

She ducked away from him and inside, slamming the sliding door shut and locking it, ignoring his calls for her to come back and finish their conversation like an adult and not a child.


	14. Chapter 14

-

For the first time in weeks, her mind felt like her own. Dracula had not clouded her dreams since the night on the balcony. His voice wasn’t in her head. Even that third voice had gone silent as she would spend her days out shopping and going to see movies at the cinema on the other side of town. She spent most of her time alone, but never at home. Her apartment had been contaminated with images of him on the balcony as he dry-fucked her, in her shower while he washed her hair, and in her kitchen with his tongue in her mouth. She couldn’t stand to see him everywhere and feel him everywhere in that apartment. She could even smell that intoxicating cologne he wore on her clothes. That’s why she bought a whole new wardrobe. 

She ignored phone calls from Jack’s new number in favor of relaxing in the hotel’s large bathtub that allowed her to soak in hot and bubbly water that was up to her chin. It was relaxing. Laying in that warmth allowed her to forget about her condition for just a few hours as she soaked, waiting until the water went cold before she would even consider getting out.

That voice in her head accused her of being overly extravagant, blowing her inheritance and savings on unnecessary things like this hotel suite that cost more than her rent. She didn’t care. It wasn’t like her money was needed to support her for another forty years. She had a handful of months left and she intended on spending them in the way she wanted. She intended to die on her own terms.

She took a deep breath as she ducked her head under the water and stared up at the cream ceiling through the distortion of the water. The only thing she heard with the water clogging her ears was her heartbeat that seemed to struggle with the lack of oxygen in her bloodstream. Her chest ached slightly as her lungs screamed for oxygen, but she just let her limbs relax in the now chilled water. She blinked a few times when her vision seemed to go spotty. Her hair tickled her face and neck as it floated haphazardly around her. Her lungs continued to beg for air and make her finger clench in desperation at the edge of the bathtub to pull herself up and out of the tub, but her brain refused. She was stronger than this ridiculous need to breathe. 

“What are you doing? Get out of the water!” The woman’s voice screamed in a Hungarian accent. “Do you know how much it hurts to drown?”

Zoe let bubbles leave her mouth as she let the breath she had been holding for far too long float to the top, enjoying the satisfying popping noise that filled her ears. It gave her slight relief only for the tightness in her chest to increase and cause her body to contort slightly under the weight of her body’s need for oxygen. The need to give in was getting greater and greater by the millisecond.

“Go up for air, you stupid girl!” The woman shouted in anger.

A sudden gasp caused water to flood into her mouth and she caught her grip on the tub at just the right second before the liquid took over her lungs. She choked, coughing water up recklessly over the edge of the tub and onto the tile floor. Her hair stuck to her face in all directions as she let herself be overtaken by the choking noises that insisted on making themselves audible, tears falling down her cheeks next to water drops as her body tried to manage to expel the water in her lungs and stomach as she tried to relieve the burning in her chest.

“Reckless,” his voice was sharp and without emotion, cutting through her mind and making her body shudder. She thought she had gotten him out of her head.


	15. Chapter 15

She couldn’t stop the feeling she had of being watched as she finally pulled herself out of the bathtub once she stopped choking on bathwater. Her feet were unstable on the slippery tile under her bare feet as she clung to the fluffy white bath towel that she wrapped around her body. She tried to ignore that feeling of eyes on her because she should have known it was irrational. The blinds were shut and she was alone. No one could see her, so she dropped her towel and wrapped it around her wet hair. She dug through the dresser, but couldn’t find anything to sleep in besides one of her large t-shirts she thought she had left at the apartment, so she slipped the faded Oxford shirt over her towel wrapped hair and climbed into the hotel bed. The comforter and sheets were thick and warm around her body that was still shivering from its brush with death. She sunk into the mattress with a contented sigh, but her body still ached all over and her stomach and chest still felt like they were on fire.

“You would waste the few months you have left?” Each word that filled her head switched back and forth between his voice and that female voice. “How could you be so stupid, Zoe?”

She rolled onto her left side, tucking her hands up against her chest and under her chin as she tried to soothe her racing mind, “Just let me be.”

“You’re alone and you’re scared, but that should not be an excuse for you to take the matter of your life into your own hands. You’re on this earth for a reason,” the female voice seemed to try to relax her, but Zoe still heard her screaming at her while she inhaled the soapy bath water she had been soaking in only a few minutes ago.

When Dracula’s voice penetrated her skull once more, she squeezed her eyes shut as tightly as she could, trying to force him out of her head, “Killing yourself would be selfish. What about those who care about you?”

“Just stop it,” she hissed as she buried her face into one of the thick pillows beneath her head. 

Her head began to spin as she thought about everything that was happening. She was hearing voices in her head. She had tactile hallucinations about that vampire holding her and touching her and kissing her. She felt as though her mind was not her own because it wasn’t. That voice in her head was constantly nagging at her. He was always there to make sure she knew she would never get rid of him, but she didn’t know if that meant he was somehow capable of human connection or if he just liked playing with his food.

“You’re allowed to cry, you know,” he whispered into her ear as he sank onto the mattress next to her, taking her into his arms the way a parent would stop their sobbing toddler from crying after a nightmare would. At his command she let tears flow down her flushed cheeks while he hushed her was a quiet tone, stroking her wet hair as he pulled it out of the towel on her head. “You’re okay, Zoe. I’m here. I’m not going anywhere.”

She wanted to say something that would hurt him because she was hurting, but not because she hadn’t had him at her side for several weeks even though it played a factor. She wanted to hurt his ego because he drove her up a wall. He just had to find a way to escape the Jonathan Harker Foundation. He couldn’t just stay where he was, locked up. It drove her crazy because she thought she was going crazy when she thought he was with her. After all, there was no reason he should be there. At least when he was locked away at the Harker Foundation she could explain the experience away by blaming her body which craved touch for influencing her brain to dream about him, a vampire who was dangerous and attractive. 

Her mind couldn’t explain away him being in this bed with her, holding her against his chest while she cried into the white cotton t-shirt he was wearing that smelled a bit sweaty like he had been working out because he wasn’t locked away in secret, so she pushed back against him as he pressed her face into his chest with a hand on the back of her head. As she fought back, he pressed harder until she gave up and wrapped her arms around him so she could adjust to hide her face in the crook of her neck.

“I hate you for what you’ve done to me,” she choked out between racking sobs, gasping with each word that left her throat. “I hate you for telling me I’m dying. I hate you for it.”

His hands took her shoulders as he pushed her away to look at her face that was red and splotchy. She was an ugly crier, but he found it endearing. He didn’t like women to be perfect, “I didn’t give you cancer, Zoe. You’re a woman of science. You know that.”

She struggled against him again, missing the angles of his body pressing against her own, “But I never would have known. I could have just died and not known.” She finally got him to let go of her, only to tackle him and lay on top of him. Her legs straddled his waist while her torso was pressed tightly against. “Why did you have to tell me? What advantage did that give you?”

“Zoe Van Helsing,” he sighed as he tucked a wet strand of her hair behind her ear, “you are the most interesting woman I have ever met in my life.”

Her fist came up from beside his head to wipe away a few tears that had fallen over her face that threatened to fall onto him, “I’m just a game to you.”

He lifted to place his lips against hers in a deep kiss, rolling her onto her back with legs wrapped around him as he trapped her under his body weight, “You’re more than that, I’m afraid.” His hands traveled under the covers to pull the down duvet over their bodies, “I must have found love.”

“You’re lying,” she murmured as the weight of him and the blanket, as well as the exhaustion from her violent cries, caused her body to go limp against the mattress. Maybe he had her under his hypnosis. She didn’t know. Her mind was too hazy.

“Do you love me, Zoe?”

“I…” She struggled to get out as her eyelids were heavy, her limbs releasing their grip on his body. 

He watched as her head lulled to the side, eyes closed and lips parted in the formation of her next word, but she was out. His lips curled into a small smile as he pulled himself off of her small form, tucking the duvet up under her. He kissed her parted lips as his phone buzzed in the pocket of his sweatpants,

“Text message: Lucy Westenra,” popped up on his illuminated screen. “I’m free in 20. Same place as last time?


	16. Chapter 16

She took a long sip of her coffee, black, the muted slurping sound tickling her lips that were wrapped around the to-go lid on her cup. Her eyes stared out into the sunlit streets just behind Jack Seward’s head and through the window behind him. She usually took her coffee with heavy cream and too much sugar, but she found the thought of sweetness repulsive these days when it came to her caffeine. She started to prefer bitterness lately.

“Zoe, are you okay?” Jack asked, taking her hand to break her out of the trance she was in. 

She nodded softly and pulled her hand away from his, “Yeah, I’m fine. I just haven’t been sleeping.”

“The cancer?”

The word didn’t sound real to her. It never had after she got her diagnosis, but the cancer wasn’t why she could not make herself go to sleep. She deduced that if she didn’t sleep that Dracula couldn’t enter her mind and play with her mind that was in the darkest state it had ever been in her whole life. She was a happy child growing up with loving parents who supported her through anything she wanted to tackle. She wasn’t popular in school, but she was very intelligent and was accepted to some of the best universities in Europe, inside and outside of Britain. Her parents paid for her undergraduate at the University of Amsterdam in Holland for her to study business. Her graduate degree in religious studies was done at Pázmány Péter Catholic University in Budapest, Hungary, paid for by the Jonathan Harker Foundation which her grandfather was running at the time. Her doctorate at Oxford University’s medical school was also paid for by the foundation. She had no worries growing up, no student debt as her parents were well off enough as well as the foundation footing most of the bill since Zoe was to run it when her grandfather and father retired. However, through all of her education, that vampire was still able to manipulate her like wet clay.

“Yeah, cancer,” she muttered under her breath. “There’s a lot on my mind, but I don’t want to talk about it if that’s alright with you, Jack,” her words came out a little harsher than she had meant them to and Jack’s eyes reflected that, seeming hurt, so she apologized softly as she set her empty cup down on the café table. “I’m sorry. I am. I just can’t seem to control my tone of voice.” She let out a small laugh, “I nearly bit the head off of the poor boy who brought up my room service the other night, but I made sure to tip him well. I felt awful.”

Jack smiled at his mentor, feeling a tinge in his heart as he scanned over her face which looked paler than it had the last time he had seen her at the Foundation about a month and a half before this conversation. Her features were a bit more sunken in than he had remembered and the circles under eyes were a bit darker as well, but he couldn’t tell if that was from her illness or lack of sleep. She had confided in him that it had been about fifteen days since she slept the full eight recommended hours, living off of hour or so long cat naps if her body even let her do that. 

“Have you tried sleeping pills?” He recommended as he took a bite from the scone in front of him. She hadn’t touched her food since they had picked it up at the counter. “That’s what my aunt had to do when she was sick. She said it helped a lot.”

Zoe gave the boy a small smile. He was just trying to be helpful and she could see the sadness in his eyes. The two of them did spend a lot of time together, at least two days a week before Dracula had been rediscovered and she had found out about her cancer. This was their first face-to-face meeting in months, all other conversations had been over the phone, “Do you want more coffee? I think I want another cup.”

Their coffee ‘date’ was over after Zoe downed her second large latte, the two of them stayed silent as he drove her back to the hotel he had picked her up from a few hours ago, so it was sudden when she asked if he had heard anything about Dracula from anyone at the foundation, but he noticed she wouldn’t use the vampire’s name and that she almost seemed to cringe when he used it when answering her question, “No, no one has heard anything about Dracula. People have gone missing, but O’Connell can’t figure out if they’re related to him or not.”

“How many?” 

Her eyes were glued to the road even though she was in the passenger seat, her mind obviously at work. She wore that look that meant the wheels were turning in her head, but it was different. Her brow wasn’t knitted as tightly, “About twenty-five since you left the foundation and he escaped.”

Her expression twisted into disgust, remembering the metallic tang on his tongue when he kissed her on the balcony of her apartment. She wondered which of the twenty-five the one she had tasted was. She felt nauseous, knowing for a fact this one was not caused by the medication her doctor had put her on to help with her pain. She was nauseous because when he kissed her that night, she had enjoyed it, pressing her body against his as she allowed him to touch her. She had ignored the taste of blood in his mouth because she was desperate for touch, her mind clouded by lust and the fact that she only had a few months left to live, less time now. 

“You’re telling me that Dr. Amelia O’Connell can’t pin-point a single missing person to Dracula even though she has unlimited access to the Foundation’s database as well as any police report she needs?” Zoe rolled her eyes, letting her frustration with her lack of self-control when it came to earthly pleasures out on her old colleague who she knew was just as capable as herself. 

“You know how clean he tries to be,” Jack countered, “so there’s nothing that could be done. The police say that all of the missing persons were on the same dating app, though, so it’s likely that there’s just a serial killer.”

“A serial killer or a vampire on the loose,” Zoe scoffed as she rested her head against the window of Jack’s car. “Sounds like the same thing if you ask me.”


	17. Chapter 17

She sat cross-legged on the fluffy hotel room bed, scanning her social media for something that would interest her, but nothing did. Netflix didn’t have much to offer her anymore as she had binged every episode of anything that had caught her attention. It was too late to try and text Amelia to make amends on how Zoe had left things. She did feel bad about it because she had let her emotions cloud her judgment, something she wasn’t able to control since she Dracula informed her that she was dying. She was constantly at war with the voice in her head that had a thick Holland accent, so her own emotions were clouded when it came to conversations with real people.

Tapping on the glass French doors startled her, but she tried to ignore at as she restarted Penny Dreadful for the millionth time during her stay at the hotel, but the tapping continued. When the little hairs on the back of her neck stood on end, she knew exactly what was tapping at the door. Her feet hit the carpeting and her large shirt swung down to cover the athletic shorts she had on. She opened the doors without parting the curtains. She didn’t need to do so to know who was tapping.

His eyes were dark against the light that was shining on him from her room. His skin as pale as she had remembered, hair slicked back, but not as neatly as the last time she’d seen him. His modernization must have allowed his style to relax a bit as he stood before her in a pair of black slacks and a white button-up with a few of the top buttons undone. She swallowed hard as she tried to keep her mind clear. He was leaned up against the frame, both of them well aware where the edge of her room met the balcony, marked with a transitional strip of metal.

“Let me in, Zoe,” he said with a small smile, teeth flashing at her while his eyes scanned her bare legs and bare face. “Please let me in. I’m afraid that I’ve missed you.”

Her eyes narrowed and her arms crossed over her chest, “Now, why would I do that? It would just give you access to everyone in this building. I’m not going to let you go on a killing spree.”

His eyes challenged hers, but his lips still held his playful smile, “What if I promise you that I will only enter this room and no other. I will not harm a single hair on anyone’s head.”

Zoe did not let her demeanor break even as he took a particularly deep breath that caused his chest to flare, but the sound of her heart skipping a beat gave her away to him. His toothy grin grew and he popped a few more buttons, taking note of how her heartrate quickened again. He kept her eyes as he unbuttoned it all the way. Her face was firm as she made sure her eyes did not leave his. She wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of making her look even though she wanted to.

“Don’t give in to his temptations,” that Holland accent rang through her consciousness. “You cannot trust him, Zoe.”

“Let me in, Zoe,” he repeated, stepping as close to her as he could. She could feel his breath on her face and it made her stomach do somersaults, “At least come out here, darling. I want to kiss you.” He didn’t smell of blood, so she wondered if she was safe to do so even though she knew he wouldn’t try to attack her. “Don’t look at me like that,” he whispered as he ran a clawed finger over the space between her eyebrows that was scrunched together. “You’ll get wrinkles.”

His comment appealed to her narcissistic side and made her relax her face, but she kept her jaw clenched. She didn’t trust herself and that voice in her head didn’t trust her either, telling her this was part of his game and once he had access to the building he would slaughter every person there was, but he wasn’t pressing for it like he should or would have been and that confused her a bit. His face gave her a contented look as she stepped past him and onto the balcony, arms still crossed as her eyes stared off into the night, streetlamps making constellation-like patterns in the streets below her. She leaned on her forearms against the cold metal. She tried not to pay him any attention because she knew it would only fuel his already inflated ego.

Her body stiffened as his lips brushed over her neck in a kiss, making her shudder, “I thought you were done with me.”

He hummed against her skin in a way that told her that it was just a lie, “I wanted to see who needed who more.” She stepped away from him, leaning against the rail to eye him. Her chin was tilted up towards him, “I was incorrect that you would seek me out first.”

“Of course you would,” her voice didn’t sound like her own, but rather like the one in her head. “I am just a pawn in your game. You are the one who needs me.”

Before her accent shifted back to normal midway through her sentence he let out a small breath of his amusement, well aware that she didn’t even know the shift in the pronunciation of her words. His fingers traced her cheekbone before running through her hair that was made up of natural waves, so much like he remembered Agatha’s to be, only shorter. She had let her hair air-dry after her shower. She must have been avoiding the bathtub since her incident only she didn’t know that he knew that.

“I do not need you,” he pressed, pulling her into his arms, pressing his bare chest to hers that was still covered by cotton, “but I do want you on that bed in there, but you won’t invite me in.”

Her laugh sounded like Agatha’s, soft and breathy, but arrogant, “You want to have sex with me, huh? I would have thought you would be having plenty of sex with your victims which you’ve been meeting through Tinder.”

“Agatha,” he tried to calm her, taking her had.

“Zoe.” She punctuated with a quick turn on her heels as she headed back into the bedroom.

“Zoe,” he clarified with intention, “do you think I’d be so idiotic? How often do you engage in intercourse with your food?”

Her glare shot daggers through him as he stood as close to her as he could with his inhibition to enter that room without her invitation. So, he just watched her as she curled up under the covers and faced away from him, his body aching to climb into bed with her and hold her, “Listen to me closely, Count Dracula. You are not invited in.”

“I know you want me, Zoe. I can taste it,” his voice was as dark as she had ever heard it before. “I can smell it.”

“Go on your way. You will not be getting what you want tonight,” that accent was back and made his own stomach flip.

He laughed as he realized what was going on, “You’re jealous.”

She shot up, head whipping towards him. Zoe was fully in charge here, “Jealous? Why on earth would I be jealous? You’re a monster who I wish would leave me alone to die in peace instead of showing up to play with my head and my emotions.” Her eyes seemed to go red and so did her face, “I cannot believe you thought I would even be the least be attracted to you enough to be jealous of some person you met on Tinder who you eventually ate. God, you disgust me.”

“Zoe,” he tried to plead, but she rolled over and flipped the light switch.

“I would appreciate it if you would shut that door behind you before you leave,” her voice was toxic as she threw her sentence at him from over her shoulder.

He shut the doors as she had asked, but watched her through the darkness as she rolled to face the doors, eyes wide open, but unable to see him. He watched as she fell asleep, hearing her heart slow to a steady beat even though the thick glass pane that separated him from where she lay ten feet from the door. Oh, he wished she had invited her in as he watched her shiver even though she was wrapped up under a ball of fluff.


	18. Chapter 18

“Come in, sir!” The clerk smiled. “It’ cold outside.”

“It is,” Dracula smiled, stepping into the foyer. His eyes scanned the lobby which was lit in dull light, giving the room a sexy glow. “Would you mind helping me, son. You see, the misses and I got into a bit of an argument and I left our room without my key. She won’t let me back in.”

The man behind the counter, no older than twenty-five years old nodded quickly, “I get it. My girlfriend and I have had that problem before. What’s the reservation under?”

“I believe it’s under my wife’s name,” he grinned, flipping nonchalantly through the magazine that was sitting on the receptionist desk, “Zoe Van Helsing.”

“Dr. Zoe Van Helsing?”

“That’s my girl,” the vampire smiled, flashing fangs.

Gotcha,” the boy laughed. “Room 7895. I’ll have a bottle of wine sent up to your room. Maybe the misses will accept it as an apology.”

Dracula’s clawed fingers took the key card from the young man behind the counter, slipping the boy a large tip as he headed towards the elevator. He pushed the button for the seventh floor and listened to the elevator music which reminded him of one of Mozart’s symphonies he had attended a few hundred years ago. The elevator chimed as it reached the seventh floor. It only took him a moment to find Zoe’s room. He could smell the scent of her skin and the tang of her blood, slipping into her room a softly as he could to avoid the light from the hall flooding into her darkened room.

Thanks to his ability to see even in the dimmest of lighting, he found her bed quickly. She was lying on her back with her hands resting just below her breasts, folded onto one another as if she were the center of attention at a wake. He sat on the edge of her bed, slipping his fingers around her right wrist. His lips brushed against the skin before he let his fangs scratch at her flesh, careful not to break the skin. He wanted to taste her, but he was able to control himself, something he wasn’t normally good at because he knew she was poison to him. 

He watched her as her back arched towards the ceiling before slumping her body back down to rest on her side, facing away from him. The small, sleepy moan that left her throat with the exertion of moving her sleeping frame sounded like the most beautiful noise he had ever heard in his over five hundred years of life, more stunning than his favorite piece by his favorite late musician, Elvira Madigan Theme – Piano Concerto Number 21 in C Major. He brushed her hair away from her neck to admire the white thread that would now adorn her skin for the rest of her life, the mark he left on her to claim her as his. He never noticed the heart-shaped mole above the scar he gave her before. How cute. He watched her little mannerisms throughout the night, taking a particular interest when she started to snore ever so slightly when her eyelids started to flutter when a dream took over her mind. 

He could hear Agatha in his head as he always did since her first tasted her blood. He didn’t mind it because he adored the way her accent sounded. He never got tired of the sound of it, but he was always sick of her nagging, “Let the poor girl sleep. She’s dying. You do not need for her.”

“Don’t I?” He whispered, nuzzling into Zoe’s throat with his nose which earned him another one of those delectable moans of hers.

“You cannot eat her. You will die,” Agatha huffed in his ear, sounding so real that he thought he could roll over and see the nun standing with her arms crossed next to the bed.

He gave an amused chuckled that came from the back of his throat, so deep that he almost didn’t hear it himself, “You know how the game works, Agatha. I suggest you let me play it.”


	19. Chapter 19

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's some slightly graphic depictions of blood in this chapter, but just at the beginning.

Zoe awoke with a start, her body suddenly sitting up, eyes wide and lungs heaving as they tried to catch a decent breath. Her eyes searched the darkness for the object that was causing all of the hairs on the back of her neck and on her arms to stand on end. She had goosebumps all over her body as her heart raced. Her brain had been playing what felt like memories over and over again in her head. The only problem was that they weren’t her memories. They consisted of candlelit stone rooms and bloodied nuns, eviscerated by a pack of black wolves. Their blood spilled over the cobblestone floors, staining the rock burgundy as wolves gnawed at their limp bodies, tearing away habits to reach more flesh.

She scraped her fingernails through her scalp in an attempt to calm herself, but she just heard screams echoing in her mind. She shivered as she saw these visions pass over her eyes in the darkness of her hotel room, horrific scenes playing over the curtain of black that the darkness veiled the room in. She was so caught up in her mind that she didn’t recognize the heavy weight of an arm thrown across her lap where her abdomen connected to her hips. She was convinced she was losing her mind as she continued to watch what appeared to be the Mother Superior be beheaded by a single swing of a sword much like Anne Boleyn. The sound of it did corkscrews through her mind, a metallic squelching sound that made her want to gag.

“What’s wrong, darling?” A voice wondered through the misty haze of her mind.

She swallowed her saliva hard. She didn’t remember bringing a guy back to her room, but maybe she drank too much at the hotel bar. She didn’t remember, “Nothing, love. Just a nightmare.”

She shimmied out from the grip on her waist and fumbled through the dark to the bathroom. Her head was pounding, but, at least, she still had her head attached to her shoulders. She shut the bathroom door with a small click, waiting until it was fully closed before flicking on the light as not to disturb her bedmate, whoever he was. Her reflection in the mirror almost startled her, eyes dark around the edges with exhaustion while the rest of her face seemed to have lost every bit of color it had the night before. Her fingers were on fire and her legs felt like they were burning, but her body was in a cold sweat.

Her left hand snatched the bottle of Tylenol that was on the counter, popping two in her mouth before using her hands to cup water from the sink to down the white capsules in her dry mouth. She needed this headache to go away so she could think of a polite way to kick that strange man out of her bed at six-thirty in the morning. She preferred not to deal with an awkward ‘good morning’ with a man whose name she was sure she didn’t remember and wouldn’t remember even after seeing his face in the daylight. This was the worst part about one-night stands. She just hoped he wasn’t the kind to insist that she call him in a few hours. The quickly attached kind was her least favorite. They never liked to leave without a promise for dinner the following night which she always agreed to because she felt bad about them getting attached, a mistake she stopped making after her twenty-fourth birthday.

She took a deep breath before moving to open the bathroom door, noticing that whoever he was had turned on the bedroom light. She looked a mess, so she hoped he didn’t have high expectations, but she pulled her hair from the messy bun on top of her head, bending over to fluff it in an attempt to at least fix her tire appearance. She turned the nob with a fake smile, ready to greet whoever was there, but it fell off of her lips and hit the floor like an anvil in a cartoon. Dracula stood before her, a glass of wine in his hand which was outstretched in her direction for her to take.

“Where did he go? What did you do?” Zoe spat in his direction, staying as far from him as she could, but she did want that wine, she needed it to deal with him.

His grin was amused and his head cocked to the side as he eyed her up, “I didn’t see anyone here when I came in. There wasn’t anyone here after our lovely conversation on the balcony.”

That’s right. She drank too much at the hotel bar then dismissed the vampire’s attempt to get her into bed even though she might not have done the same if she had had just one more drink. When she mixed alcohol, she was always had fewer inhibitions, “I did not invite you in. I hadn’t drank that much. How did you get in?”

“Zoe,” he mused, her voice sounding like a song coming off of his lips, “you’re in a hotel. If I stand at the door, someone will invite me in and someone did.”

“And the wine?” Zoe sighed, finally giving in to her impulse to take the wine. She took a large gulp, feeling it tingle slightly on her tongue. God it tasted good.

He refilled her glass in a smooth pour, watching her mouth wrap around the lip of the wine glass as she took a smaller, more lady-like sip, “A gift from management. I had them make me a new key for our room, dear. The young man at the counter seemed sympathetic to our plight, a bickering couple, the wife had locked her husband out of the room, denying him her bed.”

“You disgust me,” she growled over the rim of her glass as she took a seat on the sofa in the corner of the room that faced the television. 

“Do I?” He slid onto the sofa beside her, cornering her to one side. “I believe you’re lying to me, Zoe Van Helsing. I didn’t disgust you that night at your apartment.” His hand slid up her thigh.

She jerked her leg away from his grip as she had done that night at her apartment, but she didn’t try to get up and move away from him, “I’m dying. I’m sorry that I don’t have as many of the inhibitions that I usually would.”

His laugh was slick as oil as it slid into her ear, his nose brushing against her cheek, “You’re heart is racing. Are you scared of me?”

“I’ve never been scared of you,” she sighed as she kept her eyes straight ahead. She didn’t want to look at him because the wine in her body would tell her to give into him. She would not do that. “Besides, my blood is death to you.”

His tongue trailed over her neck, following the path that her carotid artery took, “Well, I’m afraid that being undead has also caused me to lose some of my inhibitions as well.” He took the shell of her right ear between his teeth, careful not to break the skin, sighing into her as she moaned softly. “Give in to me. I know you want to.”

“You do realize the sun will be up in less than fifteen minutes, right?” Zoe whispered as he slipped his hand into her shorts.

“I don’t need more than five to take care of you,” his charm was nauseating as his fingers slipped past the edge of her panties.


	20. Chapter 20

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There’s mentions of IVs in this chapter

When she checked herself into the hospital, she hadn’t expected that they’d ask if she wanted to be admitted to be given pain management tools along with more aggressive chemotherapy. It had seemed her cancer had progressed a lot more quickly than had been expected even though both Zoe and the doctors knew that this was an aggressive kind of cancer. Maybe she was just lucky it hadn’t killed her yet, but the pain she was in hit her hard, only being soothed by the curtain morphine pulled over her nerve endings, blocking her pain receptors. So she laid in her bed under sterile conditions reading the scanned manuscripts from Sister Agatha’s time studying Dracula before he attacked her and forced her aboard the Demeter.

Each word on the page was written with such precision and meaning as it scrawled out every myth about vampires that she had heard throughout her studies and Zoe ticked the ones she knew to be correct: cannot enter without invitation, cannot be exposed to sunlight, and fears the cross. Some were ridiculous and had even been crossed through by Agatha herself before she met the beast. She wouldn’t have had time to do it after he attacked the convent in Budapest which she had visited while studying in Hungary. There had been a monument recognizing the nuns who had been slaughtered, but no mention of vampires, only a plague which had the names of each of the nuns that were slaughtered and the ones who went missing, Agatha being on that list. She supposed those who put together this monument had assumed that she and the other few women who were listed as missing had just been torn apart in such a way that they were unrecognizable even to the survivors who would have known them best.

She felt sick again, grabbing for the plastic pan on her bedside table that was there for this exact purpose, vomiting at the thought of what Dracula had done to get back Jonathan Harker, eventually settling for Agatha Van Helsing after she tormented him, cutting her hand to test his limitations of entrance without invitation. Then she vomited again, thinking of the vampire's fingers between her legs while she moaned into his mouth while gripping the lapel of his blazer. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, still feeling that knot in the back of her throat as she set the bowl aside as far away from her as possible.

“Dr. Helsing,” the nurse said as she pulled in a cart full of needles and vials, “are you okay? Would you like me to get you something for your nausea?”

Zoe closed the scanned journal and set it aside before rolling up the sleeve of her cardigan so the nurse could get at her IV, “Yes, I’ll take something for nausea. Please.”

The young girl who looked about Jack Seward’s age gave her a small laugh in an attempt to lighten the mood, “I’ll talk to your doctor as soon as I get done in here. I need to draw a little blood. Lots of tests to run. Is that okay?”

Zoe nodded, glancing out the window of her room, noting that the sun would set soon, within the hour and Dracula would once again be on the hunt for a new victim, fresh blood, “Of course. Do what you need to do.”

The two sat in awkward silence as the nurse drew vial after vial of blood, seeming as though she wouldn’t have anything left once the nurse was done. She didn’t feel the plastic tube that kept her good vein open for the doctors and nurses to draw from whenever they pleased anymore. She hardly felt the stick of needles or injections into her IV which would only cause slight pressure before dissipating the medication into her veins. She felt broken and not herself. She had worked every day since she turned sixteen years old and was given her seat on the board of the Jonathan Harker Foundation. She had spent all of that time studying medicine and religion to better serve the foundation. Now, she had no part of it, allowing her disease to control her life, making her make poor decisions like allowing that vampire to touch her and take her hair into his hands while she took him into her mouth. She had enjoyed it and that made her want to vomit again.

The young nurse must have noticed her patient turning green, forcing the pink plastic under her chin so that Zoe wouldn’t have to reach for it herself, “I think I’ve got enough blood now. I’ll see what I can do about that nausea.”

Zoe thanked her once she finally regained control over her gag reflex, her eyes producing tears through the push of her body trying to expel its sins caused by inhibition. Even though all of this emotion and disgust for Dracula, she could still swear that she smelled his cologne and the product he used to slick back his hair. She could have sworn she felt him in the room as soon as the nurse left her alone, but that couldn’t be true. The sun still flowed through the window of her hospital room in the oncology wing through the sheer red curtains.


	21. Chapter 21

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I've also started a new fic called Eternal Affray. It's also a Dracula fic with an OFC. Please check it out and let me know what you think

She had once again woken with a start, something that seemed to be happening daily now, but it wasn’t because of the screams from faceless and eviscerated nuns this time. It was the sound of flesh tearing away from the bone. Her scream and another echoing off of the stones that entrapped her and the young, blonde girl who wore matching blue habits. Flesh tore and ripped from itself without blood, the pale man without hair screamed as his face was pulled apart from the mouth. Once flesh was gone, Dracula stared back at her, face bloodied, with a fanged grin glinting in the candlelight.

Her breath was heavy and her heart was beating rapidly in her ears. She was surprised doctors and nurses didn’t rush in as the beeping of the monitor was going crazy. Her eyes searched the darkness, knowing she was safe, but she couldn’t get the image of who she felt was Jonathan Harker’s face being shredded by the vampire who had worn him as a skin suit, wearing his face like Hannibal Lector from Silence of the Lambs.

“Well, Zoe, have the lambs stopped screaming?”

A bouquet of black roses sat in a white vase on her bedside table. Her fingers grazed over the velvet petals. The card attached was written in red ink and was scrawled with her name on the outside. The paper felt thick and expensive between her blue-painted fingers. She flipped it open and the card read ‘Black means death.’ The ink was drippy and sticky, leaving the mirror image of the words on the flap of the folded card. It was blood, shining and metallic, smeared on her fingers as she crumpled it up and threw it across the room. She stared down at her bloody hands with wide eyes, not even noticing the nurse who had just walked in to check her vitals.

“Oh, Dr. Helsing, did your husband come by again?” The older man grinned as she took down the numbers on the machine Zoe was connected to into the tablet that was in his hands.

“Excuse me?” Zoe quirked her head up to the nurse. “I’m not married.”

He took her arm and wrapped the blood pressure cuff around her thin arm, pressing the button on the machine, “Boyfriend then. He’s been here almost every night.” His smile was wide as he recounted the time the mysterious man to Zoe, “He would just sit here and hold your hand. He’s just so attentive to you. It’s really sweet. He wouldn’t even go down and get breakfast from the cafeteria yesterday when it opened.”

“That sounds like him,” Zoe more mused to herself, nonchalantly wiping the blood on her hands off on a handful of the tissues that sat next to the roses.

“If you don’t mind me saying, Doctor, you’ve got quite the catch,” the man smiled. “He looks about my age and still had a full head of that thick black hair.”

“And the accent,” Zoe mused, leaning to the flowers to smell them. “Will you tell him the next time he comes in that he needs to quit bringing me gifts?”

When the man left her alone, she stared into the dark of her room, the roses seemed to glimmer in the moonlight that flooded through the window. This was ridiculous. He couldn’t even let her die alone in a hospital bed in peace. She felt disgusted, but flattered at the same time as she took another sniff of the black roses which smelled just as sweet as their brighter colored counterparts. 

Why had he been coming here? Why was his obsession with her growing? He wasn’t her problem anymore. She wasn’t his problem anymore, yet he still sat by her side while she was unconscious. According to the nurse he watched her sleep every night and just held her hand, staring at her while she had nightmares about him, reliving memories that weren’t her own. She was feeling these horrific emotions that related specifically to Dracula and the atrocities he committed before her grandfather was even old enough to walk.

“You need to separate this connection with him,” the female voice informed her, Holland accent echoing in her ears. “You do not want that man attached to you.”

“Do you think I asked for this?” Zoe whispered back, her mind screaming at her for responding to the voice in her head like she was suffering for some type of psychosis.


	22. Chapter 22

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please comment because the author needs validation

She laid with her eyes closed in her hospital room as she had been doing for about two weeks now, just trying to catch some sleep, something that had been hard to come by recently since she had been informed on Dracula’s little habit of watching her sleep, but she should have expected that. She was in a hospital where everyone was welcome, especially when they were visiting the dying. Just as she had started to doze off, a shift in the light in front of her closed eyelids caused her to reawaken, believing the vampire had shown up again. She wanted to confront him about it. He didn’t have the right to do this. She wasn’t his. He didn’t own her.

When she searched the room for the debonair vampire, she was surprised to see a nun standing by the window, silhouetted by the light which tried to seep through the colorful curtains of her room. It startled her, “Hello?” The woman didn’t respond to her, face still locked on whatever she saw through the window. “Did somebody send you?” Zoe, though she tried, she couldn’t keep the irritation from hijacking her tone. She was in far too much pain to be ignored when all she wanted to be answers, “Sorry, no offense, but I am not a believer.”

This was unusual even for something that was happening in her life which was full of the supernatural and other darkness. The nun just watched out the window as if she didn’t even notice the dying woman in the bed behind her that was Zoe who was more than vocal enough to get someone’s attention. 

Right as she was getting ready to address the nun again, the sound of her name coming from a familiar voice stole her attention away from the seemingly deaf nun, “Zoe.” Her eyes darted to where Jack had just walked through the door, his face friendly, “Sorry I didn’t mean to…”

“Oh, Jack,” she smiled, wiping the annoyed look from her face. “Hello.” She glanced back to the window where the nun seemed to have disappeared. God, this was confusing. “Sorry, I was dreaming. Come in.”

“Sorry if I startled you,” he sighed, his voice sounded incredibly different from how it usually did. He always seemed so happy when she usually saw him for coffee or just to catch up.

“No, no you didn’t,” she huffed as she pushed herself to sit up. Her pride made her feel strange lying down like she was a dying woman, frail. She didn’t like it. “Ugh, I’m so glad you’re here. I’ve been incredibly bored

He looked at her with a smirk, hands folded in his lap, “I didn’t bring any grapes.”

“I hate grapes,” she snorted as she popped one of the pills on her bedside tabled into her mouth and downed it with water, remembering the inside joke that began the first time they met for coffee after he finished her class and worked as her intern. She had asked him if she had brought the final grades and he had thought she said grapes instead.

He smiled back at her, amusement in his voice as well. His attempts to cheer her up seeming to have worked even though he knew this conversation would be much more somber than it was in that moment, “In that case, you’re welcome.”

Silence fell over them for a moment as the after-effects of his little joke faded into something more awkward as she didn’t know how to seem like herself while she laid in a bed hooked up to machines. She hated that he had to see her like this and that, if this was the last time she would see him, that this would be his last memory of her, weak and pale, “Very kind of you to come see your old mentor.” From the sad look on the young man’s face she could tell something was wrong other than the fact that she was terminal. It wasn’t her death that was most pressing on his mind at that moment, “Is it, Jack? Is it kind?”

Jack relayed all that he knew about Lucy Westenra to Zoe, even delving into his background with the girl, something he knew Zoe would not agree with. She had always suggested that he find a girl that’s going to love him more than anything ever since he introduced a snotty college gymnast to her a few years ago who was too engrossed in her cellphone to even acknowledge any question Zoe had asked her about herself, but Zoe knew better than to bring this up while Jack relayed the situation to her. He seemed so broken and she knew it was because he loved her. This Lucy Westenra was the girl Jack almost left the donor program for to be with. She must have been something special to him.

“Oh, Jack,” she sighed, her voice racked in sadness for the boy she cared so much for. “You were my star pupil. I only suggested you for the donor program to help you earn some money and get you through college.” She took his hand in an attempt to soothe him. She hated seeing him this way more than she hated looking the way she did in front of him. “I never thought Dracula would come back.”

He shook his head, not meeting her eyes. He knew she felt guilty for all of this. If he hadn’t joined the program, Dracula never would have gotten ahold of his phone and met this Lucy girl, “Nobody did.” His sigh seemed to drop the temperature in the room by ten degrees, “So, what do you think about Lucy?”

“It’s possible,” mumbles, hand going to grip the side of her neck which the vampire had bitten into. “It could be him, but Dracula chooses his victims for a reason. Is there anything special about her?” 

Zoe knew that question was stupid as soon as it left her mouth. It was obvious how that girl had affected him. His eyes lit up, but remained sad thanks to the awful situation he was being faced with, “I love her, but she’s a perfectly ordinary girl.”

“She can’t be,” Zoe mused. “If it is Dracula, what keeps him coming back for more?”

Jack tilted his head to the side, eyebrows drawing together in confusion as he noted Zoe’s shift in diction and articulation in how she spoke with that last question about why the vampire chose Lucy, “Are you okay?”

Zoe nodded, taking Jack’s hand, “I am. I’m just really happy you stopped by.”


	23. Chapter 23

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please appease the author with comments because it keeps her motivated!

Zoe still laid in her hospital bed, waiting for the time she was given the sweet relief from this pain she was in. She was getting so sick of the pain medicines keeping her unconscious. She opened her eyes, expecting to see another nurse in that drab room there to check her vitals for the millionth time that day, but the sight of ancient rock walls and candlelight caught her off guard. Through the darkness that the light above her bed did not illuminate, she saw that same nun who stood by her window earlier, scratching with a quill, seemingly not noticing the modern medical equipment and lighting less than twenty feet behind her.

“I’ll be with you in a moment,” the woman in the habit smiled over her shoulder.

Zoe stared at the woman in blue, her mind reeling. She knew that nose and those eyes and those lips. She had known them her whole life because she had been looking at them in the mirror her whole life, but that wasn’t the most pressing matter on her mind. She was in a place she had never been to before. It was foreign, yet familiar and comfortable, “Where am I?”

“That is not the question, Zoe,” the woman smiled, walking towards her from the desk she had previously been scribbling notes at. “I may call you Zoe, may I?” Her hands were folded in front of her as she made her way closer. Her tone was soft, yet commanding in some sort of way. Zoe recognized it, though, as the voice that had been ringing through her mind the past month or so when Zoe decided to make poor decisions involving the vampire. “The question is: what are Dracula’s limitations? We know three things: he cannot walk in the sunlight, he may not enter an abode without invitation, and he fears, above all things, the sight of the cross. But, you see, we are wrong,” Zoe had no idea what to say to this woman who was racking off what she knew about Dracula, her diction sounding familiar to what she had read over and over again throughout her time at the Jonathan Harker foundation, but she couldn’t quite place her annoyance at the situation. Her face was surly showing off her emotions. She had always had a difficult time keeping her facial expressions under control. “These three things must be one thing, much tidier. God is always tidy, well according to His account,” the nun’s voice went off into a small laugh of amusement that sounded almost like Zoe’s own, but she couldn’t remember the last time she had laughed like that. It must have been years, possibly since before she finished her doctorate. “Do stop hanging your mouth open like that. Dracula drank my blood and you drank his. Blood is lives. What’s left of my blood is now in you. As he promised, I have traveled to the new world in his veins. There are an awful lot of people in Dracula’s blood, but I supposed my DNA synced with yours. Oh, what a useful vocabulary I now have!”

Zoe closed her mouth as instructed, not even having realized she even had it open, “Who are you?”

“It’s perfectly obvious who I am,” the nun sighed matter-of-factly, the scenery of ancient stone shifting back to the painted walls of Zoe’s hospital room, the door shutting behind the nun. “So, what does Dracula fear?”

“I don’t know,” Zoe’s voice was irritable. She had never been much for religion, seeing it as just another thing to try and ruin her life. She had only spent some of her time in school studying it because her father had suggested it, insisting that it would be helpful to her as it had been to Sister Agatha Van Helsing, her second great aunt who was the only person who had even come close to killing that vampire who was now on the run, certainly slaughtering innocent people while also invading her mind. God, how did she let herself find her heart falling for a monster?

The nun tilted her head to the side as she sat softly at the foot of Zoe’s bed, “What does he want, then?”

“I don’t know,” Zoe couldn’t hide her irritation anymore, feeling as if she were in school again, being questioned by the teacher over a subject she didn’t much care for.

“Yes, you do,” she smiled as she gave Zoe’s leg a small pat, seemingly not letting Zoe’s bitterness bother her. “He returned to feed on Lucy Westenra time and time again. He could feed off anyone in London, anyone in the world. Why return to one perfectly ornery girl night after night?”

The thought of how Dracula had begun obsessing over this Lucy girl made her heart sting in a way she couldn’t exactly explain. It shouldn’t bother her. She shouldn’t feel jealous because she did not want that beast feeding on her. He couldn’t even if he wanted to. It would kill him, “Who are you?”

That laugh left the nun’s lips again, smiling ear to ear, “Who do I look like?”

“Me.”

“Correct!” The nun praised, standing again. “Think. Think. Think. What does he want and what does he fear?”

“I don’t know and I don’t care,” Zoe bit, arms crossing quickly which caused her to wince as the IV in her arm was pulled sharply at the movement. “He is not my problem anymore.”

The woman rolled her eyes and crossed her arms in the way Zoe had, “I am inside your head. I feel your guilt,” her voice gave a small twinge of sarcasm and Zoe felt an embarrassed blush to form on her cheeks. Oh, Lord, this woman knew the things she had done with that vampire, “Your foundation it was funded by… Oh, I can’t see it. You don’t like to think about it, do you?”

“Wherever that money came from, I did good with it,” Zoe insisted, her words coming out desperate even though she meant them to come out defensively.

“For many years, yes, but you also brought Dracula back to life with it, so he is still very much your problem and you know it,” what started calming words turned into ones of reprimanding.

Her words made Zoe feel like a young girl who was caught eating dessert before breakfast, but the nun was right. This was her fault, “What can I do?”

She placed a hand on Zoe’s forehead, pushing her bangs behind her ears, “Poor child. As our Lord said that night in Gethsemane, ‘the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.’”

“Tell me who you are, please,” Zoe half begged. This was too much for her. She was dying. She couldn’t handle this back and forth anymore. Maybe it was a good thing Dracula hadn’t tried to invade her mind anymore while he was focused on that Westenra girl. She didn’t have the energy for it.

“I am the spirit and you are the flesh,” she took Zoe’s hand in hers, identical hands holding their twin. “The darkness of Dracula shall guide us to the light.”

“I’m dying,” Zoe clarified, hoping that this would allow her to just lay in that bed so that she could die in peace. It was all she wanted.

“I’m dead,” the nun quipped back, sounding snarky which made Zoe like her just a little more, “but I am Sister Agatha Van Helsing, St Mary’s Convent, Budapest, and neither of us are quite done yet.”

“I just don’t understand,” Zoe kept insisting, sitting up to be able to study Agatha better. She was still amazed by the woman in front of her.

Agatha reached over and grabbed the cellphone that sat on Zoe’s bedside table, holding it out for the doctor to take, “I believe you should call Dr. Seward. He can take you to Dracula.” Agatha cupped Zoe’s cheek in her left hand, thumb stroking her cheekbone in hope to calm her brother’s great-grandchild. “I will be with you the entire time. You can do this. You are a Van Helsing.”


	24. Chapter 24

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please comment!!!!

She didn’t feel much different as she watched the nun fade from sight, seeming to be absorbed by her hand that Agatha had been holding as the time she turned into a hazy blue mist. It almost felt easier to breathe, but the pain in her body was still there. She could tell by the way it hurt to do everything that it was almost time for the end, but she wasn’t scared. She was ready for the relief, but she had to stop this monster first. She had to put these feelings in her chest for him aside even though they seemed stronger. She almost felt fonder of him, but she knew what she needed to do. She had signed discharge papers only a few minutes ago, but she still had so many things to pack.

Her phone buzzed in her ear, dial tone seemingly louder than it had been before. She just hoped Jack answered. It was late, too late to be calling her pupal, but she was on too many medications to manage her pain that she couldn’t drive herself.

“Hello?” Jack’s voice was scratchy with sleep over the line.

“I need you to come to pick me up from the hospital,” she insisted, not having the time to apologize for calling him as such an early hour or for waking him.

“Zoe, you’re dying,” Jack said in a sad voice which she knew was caused by the funeral of Lucy Westenra that happened earlier that day. He had stopped by on his way there, tears cheek stained in his suit.

She sighed, feeling guilt rise within her for being so demanding, but Agatha in the back of her mind kept insisting this was more than necessary. They probably wouldn’t make it to morning, “Don’t take too long then.”

She hung up her cellphone and began throwing the few changes of clothes she had in the small armoire into the black duffle bag on her bed. She felt stiff as she zipped up the bag and tossed it on the chair next to the bed. Sharp pain in her stomach made her sit down, hand pressing into her abdomen, but a voice in her head caught her attention.

“Sweet, Zoe,” his barely British accent cooed in her mind, “I’m so sorry.”

She sniffled as she tried to hold back tears or, more accurately, while Agatha held back Zoe’s tears and feelings that bubbled to the surface as the sound of his voice caused Zoe’s heart to flutter in her rising and falling chest. 

“I’m going to miss you,” he whispered and she felt his hand on her lower back as she doubled over despite the pain she was in to slip on her shoes.

It felt like he kissed the scar on her neck when she sat back up, head spinning from moving too fast, “I’ll miss you too.”

He hummed softly, the sound almost reminiscent of the way he said he thought he was falling in love with her that night in the hotel room. Her thoughts were interrupted by Agatha’s insisting that she stay focused, but Zoe could feel the pull on her heartstrings as he repeated how he’d miss her in her head, “His flattery will only distract you, Zoe. We have something we need to finish.”

Her green jacket felt like it was bigger than she had remembered, but the faux leather felt just as warm as it had always been. As she went to fix her hair in the mirror, she noticed it wasn’t her reflection staring back at her, but Agatha’s instead. They smiled at one another before grabbing the black duffle and heading to meet Jack by the door.

“Hey,” she smiled as she ducked into Jack Seward’s car, faking a smile over the pain that riddled her body as she contorted to slide smoothly into the car that was so low to the ground. “How are you feeling, Jack?”

His eyes were swollen from crying and she knew it. It was obvious he wasn’t alright. The girl he loved just died and now she was about to die, “I’m hanging on.”

She took his hand in hers, “So am I, but we’ll both be okay. You’ll be okay.”

Jack squeezed her hand so tight that she had to hold back a wince, but she did it for him. He was going through a lot right now and he needed her while she could still be there for him, so she took the pain, “He was listed online. I found his flat. Like you said, tall building with multiple escape routes, no visibility of a church. I also got those stakes from your apartment like you told me to.”

Zoe gave him a sad smile. This would all be over soon and Jack could finally heal after Zoe and Dracula were dead. He would be able to properly mourn the death of Lucy and Zoe without fear of the undead after the vampire was dead.

“Did you bring all of them?” Zoe muttered, glancing down at the blue wrap that laid by her feet.

Jack just nodded, eyes glued to the road in front of them, “All of them. Why do we need so many?”

He knew why and she knew he knew by the tear that fell down his cheek, “One is for me after I die. I don’t want to be undead.”

Jack glanced in her direction, holding back a sniffle, “I can’t stake you, Zoe. I won’t do it.”

She squeezed his hand tighter in her own, as tight as she could, her tear falling down her cheek, “You have to. I don’t want to risk rising from the dead. You have to do it for me. I can’t do it myself.”

Jack gave her a pleading look as the pulled up to building Dracula was living in, a majestic building towering above them and glowing with multicolored lights, “If that’s what you want.”


	25. Chapter 25

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You know I had to make him sad too!! Please comment! *IV trigger warning*

was

The stench of blood made the halls of that wreak of death and it made his mouth water, but he didn’t have time to spare for a quick bite to eat. He had to see her before she died. He would not be able to forgive himself for another five hundred years if he missed being with her during her final moments. He wasn’t there for Agatha, but he was sure he would be there for Zoe. He wouldn’t let her die alone in a hospital bed.

When he stepped into her hospital room, it smelled of her. He could smell the remnants of her floral perfume over the sterile smell of cleaning agents that made his nose scrunch up, but he couldn’t let go of her scent. Among the clashing scents, he could also smell the bitter tang of her blood coming from the orange box mounted on the wall which was used to dispose of used needles and other medical instruments that had come into contact with her blood.

The roses he had brought her several days ago still sat on the bedside table and were starting to wilt slightly, but the black petals of the flower hid the death that was befalling them. Her beige cardigan which she would wear when sleeping was left abandoned at the foot of the bed whose sheets were tucked tightly underneath the mattress as if Zoe had never been in the room within the past month.

He set down the fresh box of chocolates he had brought for her in favor of sitting on the mattress. He could almost see her sleeping there, head tossed to the side with her lips slightly parted. She always slept on her right side to face away from the window and to prevent the IV in her arm from migrating and tearing the vein it was inserted into. He enjoyed how her hands were always tucked up under her chin, tightly gripping the blanket around her with a free hand, the arm her IV was inserted into laid out flat. He always held that hand when he visited her while she was sleeping.

He picked up the fluffy beige thing at the foot of the bed and brought it up to his nose to take a big sniff, smelling her perfume on it as well as the last of the smell that came from the lavender shampoo he remembered from her apartment. It was soft between his fingers and he couldn’t stop himself from taking another deep breath of her scent. He was going to miss this smell that would fade over time even if it trapped it in an airtight bag.

As he sat alone in her room, his mind began to go to the darkest of places. He knew from the information from the male nurse he met several weeks ago that no more treatment would be administered. She was just in the hospital to manage the pain until her final moment came, so his dead heart dropped in his chest. If she wasn’t in this room, then she was dead. He missed it. He let her die all alone in this bed in this room by herself.

He cursed himself only to be disrupted by the male nurse he remembered from a few nights ago who looked at him with sad eyes, “Here to pick up the rest of her things?”

“Uh, yeah,” Dracula sighed, holding up the cardigan to show. “I’ll be sure to grab the flowers as well.”

The man patted Dracula on the shoulder before turning to exit the room. So, it was true, he supposed. Zoe was dead and gone, somewhere in the hospital he wouldn’t find. He took the flowers and vase into his free hand, tossing her cardigan over his shoulder to enjoy the smell of her that floated off of the fabric as he walked. He couldn’t deny the pain he was feeling, but it was mostly guilt that overcame him.

Renfeild was waiting in the car like he always did, doing a crossword puzzle. Dracula slammed the passenger door shut, tossing the chocolates into the lawyer’s lap, “Here, Frank. Eat these.”

“What about that doctor from the Jonathan Harker Foundation?” Frank grumbled as he popped a piece of particularly large chocolate into his mouth.

Dracula snarled, hands gripping onto the cardigan before throwing the wilted flowers and vase into the backseat, hearing the glass shatter, “She’s dead.”


	26. Chapter 26

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please comment!!!

He couldn’t deny what felt like a hole in his chest and the guilt he was riddled with as he set out two shot glasses and the small bottle of blood Renfield had left on the table for him and Miss Lucy Westenra who was due to wake up and join him in eternity at any minute. Yes, that young girl was something nice to look at, having a healthy appreciation for death, but she was nothing like Zoe who he could talk to. She wasn’t obsessed with her looks even though she took care of her appearance. That Lucy was a narcissist just like himself. She would make a fine bride to experiment with, but, in the back of his mind, he knew he would much prefer the conversations he could have with Zoe Van Helsing over constantly inflating Lucy’s ego.

He almost jumped when the buzzer at the door and through his flat. At least he wouldn’t be alone. He ran his hand over his clothes to smooth them. The least he could do was look more than his best for this girl who would now spend centuries with him, at least until he got sick of her and decided to stake her.

“You don’t look very surprised,” Zoe said matter-of-factly with her arms crossed on his doorstep, a young man standing behind her with a sickly look on his face.

He couldn’t hide the surprise on his face as he stared at the woman he believed to be dead. A part of him wanted to reach out to touch her just to make sure she wasn’t a figment of his imagination. In all honesty, he wanted to wrap her up in his arms and just hold her for the rest of the time, “You don’t look very dead.”

“I’m getting there,” she squeezed by him to get into his apartment. “Finding you wasn’t difficult. A man of your ego and breeding is incapable of hiding.” She was quite impressed with the décor around her. It was modern, yet gothic. Even with his need for the extravagant, she was interested in how minimalistic the giant apartment was, “One just has to look for a tall building with multiple exits and no view of a church.”

“Also your number is listed,” Jack huffed, trying to hold back the emotions he was feeling as Zoe had suggested. They could be used against him.

When Dracula finally drew his eyes away from Zoe, still perfectly amazed that she was alive and in front of him, he locked on the young doctor who stood on the same side of the table as himself who he recognized from his time spent at the Jonathan Harker Foundation. The doctor’s heart was pounding and the vampire could smell the mixture of fear and anger radiating off of Jack Seward.

Dracula charged over to the young doctor, gripping his neck to pull him closer, “How kind of you bringing a bottle to the party.” Dracula took a deep smell of the doctor who seemed to lack any of the skills he wished to inherit, “A very inferior vintage, but the gesture appreciated”

“Put him down,” Zoe ordered with eyes like fire, bracing her body with hands on the wooden table.

They stared each other down in a battle of the wills and he noticed something about Zoe that wasn’t there a few days ago as he sat by her sleeping form. She had more fight to her than he had ever seen. She was different, but the same all at once. It confused him.

“Why?”

“This is England.” Zoe spat at him, looking as if she would come over the table at any second to protect the young man he was about to devour, “Conversation proceeds dinner.”

His clawed hands let go of Dr. Seward’s throbbing throat, the force of the action forced him to the ground, “Ah, quite right, Dr. Helsing.”

Zoe still stared him down with her palms flat on the dark wooden table, so he mimicked her stance and challenged her. His dark eyes stared through her, but she didn’t show any sign of being afraid of him. He didn’t know if it was the fact that she wreaked of death, sure to be gone soon, or if she just knew his feelings and how he could never end her life because he relished moments with her. He delighted himself in how her eyes squinted and her head tilted to the left, revealing the scar he left on her skin.

“You’re expecting company?” Jack’s voice cut through the tension, both Dracula and Zoe turning their attention to him in unison.

“Yes.”

“Lucy Westenra?” Zoe’s voice bled with jealousy, but her expression was still as hard as ever, threatening him to call her out on the way her voice had just broken.

He leaned closer to her, still feet apart. He longed to tower inches above her while he stood centimeters apart from her body, feeling the warmth of her skin radiating to him, “You know her?”

“Ask Dr. Seward,” Zoe whispered as she lowered her body into the chair next to her. Her bod really couldn’t take the pressure of standing anymore if she expected herself to keep up the back and forth she so enjoyed with the vampire, the nun in her head forcing her was to the surface to berate her for sitting which showed a sign of weakness, “It was his phone you stole.”

“You might say I introduced you,” Jack’s voice tremored as he kept his distance from the undead before him who couldn’t take his eyes off of his dying mentor.

His voice was harsh, enunciating each syllable of the words that left his mouth, “And now she’s dead.”

“If you’re expecting Lucy to rise from the grave this evening, you’ll be interested to know she’s been cremated,” Zoe could barely get her words above a whisper as pain wracked her body.

“Cremated?” The deep bellow of Dracula’s voice made both Jack and Zoe jump with surprise. He seemed angry and that sent a red hot spike through Zoe’s chest. “But I told her! I warned her and, still, she let them put her in the fire?”

“Apparently,” like before, her voice oozed with envy, but it had a bite to it which made him glare at her, fanged bared.

“No, no, no, you don’t understand,” he kept insisting, eyes trained on the young doctor rather than Zoe because he could feel her dissatisfaction in him. She was more than enough for him, but he couldn’t keep Zoe forever. “She would have been conscious the whole time, her flesh melting, every particle of her being incinerated.” He felt Zoe’s eyes stabbing him in the back, but he amused himself with the sickly look on Dr. Seward’s face, “Stings a bit, so I’ve heard.” Dracula had planned on tormenting the young man further, but the sound of the buzzer crashed his train of thought. “See I told you. You underestimate the resilience of the vampire” The buzzer sounded another five times, aggravating the pounding in Zoe’s head caused by everything her body was trying to deal with as well as her mind being occupied by Agatha as well. “Ah, I’ve always like a lively one. Umm, Dr. Seward, she was your friend, wasn’t she?”

“Yes.”

“Now would be a good time to remember that beauty is only skin deep,” the way Dracula’s smile presented itself sent a shiver down Jack’s spine as he could only imagine what he was about to witness.

“Braveheart Jack,” Zoe soothed, reaching across the table for Jack’s trembling hands. Her accent had shifted once more and it was as if she weren’t even Zoe anymore, “remember it is the soul, not the aspect, which one loves.”

“Dr. Helsing?” Dracula called, Zoe’s face meeting his gaze as he was the only one who seemed to notice this shift in her demeanor, “You don’t sound quite yourself. Are you alright?”

He knew what was happening and so did she, a smile forming on her lips, “Perfectly.”


	27. Chapter 27

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And here it is: the long awaited final chapter... I am really sad.

Dracula didn’t truly know what was happening until Lucy Westenra laid in a wasteful pile of ashes on his granite-tiled floors and Jack Seward had sulked off at the orders of Zoe or was it Agatha, Van Helsing in a slew of messy tears, the sun shining through the floor-to-ceiling window while he writhed on the floor in a ghost pain at the warmth that engulfed him, but he felt no pain as he crawled back into the shadows. His dark eyes fell onto the woman standing in a frame of sunlight, the glow about her was angelic. It was then that he knew Zoe Van Helsing was gone and only Agatha Van Helsing remained, her face showing pity and sadness for the monster who loomed in the shadows.

“It is ninety-three million miles away,” her sweet Holland accent sighed as she braced herself on the chair next to her. “It can’t hurt you.”

He looked to Agatha in Zoe’s body, glancing towards the light that cast through his flat, showing him the beauty of everything as he hadn’t seen it over five hundred years ago. He looked back to Agatha, but he couldn’t keep his gaze only on her, staring into the blinding abyss that the sun offered. He was overcome by the beauty of the sunrise, testing this new experience with only a hand before reintroducing his whole form back into the light, relishing in the way it felt on his cold and dead skin.

The sight almost brought tears to his eyes, “Isn’t she beautiful, Agatha?”

The woman who stood only at the other end of the table gave a small hum of agreement before tightening her grip on the chair that was supporting her thin frame. Her hum mutated into that of pain as the body she occupied protested her movements with jarring pains all over, ones that she couldn’t pinpoint to a single area.

Her change in tone caught his attention and he noticed the twist in her features, remembering the expression as the one that came over her features so long ago when she dropped from the mast of the Demeter, only attached to it by a rough noose, “You’re in pain.”

“I am equal to it,” Agatha tried to muster a normal expression, the same one she always would give him, but this body was too frail now, voice breaking ever so softly.

Dracula made his way to Agatha, crouching down next to Zoe’s feet to give her the advantage of height. His hands grasped her own as he just stared into her eyes which were soft and not like he had seen Zoe’s or Agatha’s before. In the light of the star above, he noticed the true beauty that she was, barely noticeable freckles across her nose and her cheeks, a single one curled around the plumpest part of her bottom lip. It made him wonder if that was exclusive to Zoe or if Agatha had had the same markings which he never got the chance to see before.

Her expression of knowing was all he needed as permission to place his lips on upon hers in the softest way he could manage, but she pressed into his kiss ever so slightly more, “You have my permission to rush the nun.”

He let out a small breath of amusement before returning his lips to her flesh, but, this time, he placed his mouth on her jaw, kissing down the length of her delicate throat, relishing in the small shiver that overcame her. Her manicured hand pressed to his dark hair, it slipping between her long fingers like black silk and he knew what to do. Dracula traced his tongue over the pulsing vein where the scar he left on Zoe’s beautiful neck resided, slowing sinking his fangs into her.

He drew her closer to him as she breathed a sigh into his ear, pressing further into his arms. He stood her, holding all of her in his grasp before breaking away from her. Agatha’s back hit the tabletop with the softest thud, him taking great care with her head as he placed her there. She took his hand and pulled him atop of her body, being sure to hold his hand firmly in her weakened grasp as he returned to her neck.

Bright fire overcame them as she laid in a pool of silk and the softest cotton, the material caressing her bare body as he slid into her, feeling no pain, only his length and his arms around her form, tucking her head against his chest. Zoe’s emotions and Agatha’s coming closer to being one entity as his lips pressed against her own, the two rocking in sync with the other.

“You’re drinking my blood,” she whispered before meeting his kiss again, head lulling back in pleasure. “But you’ll die.”

“Then we’ll do it together,” he smiled down at her, lips capturing hers in another long kiss as she sighed against him. “After all this time, did you think I’d let it hurt?”


End file.
